EMMA killed BRW, will the lucrative ‘cash cows’ The Weekend Australian Magazine and The Australian Financial Review Magazine be next?

Latest data from EMMA shows a relative advantage for Fairfax over News in the important weekend National Newspaper market. Compared to the Roy Morgan Readership currency figures, EMMA shows higher readership for the Weekend AFR (155,000 compared to 148,000 in Roy Morgan Readership) and lower readership for The Weekend Australian (727,000 compared to 769,000 in Roy Morgan Readership).

But the real problem lies in EMMA’s readership figures for the lucrative inserted magazines. If EMMA is to be believed, The Australian Magazine has only 604,000 readers (Roy Morgan Readership currency figure is 759,000) and the AFR Magazine has only 142,000 readers according to EMMA (Roy Morgan Readership currency is 368,000). Good Weekend, the main competitor to the national newspaper inserted magazines, has also suffered at the hand of EMMA. Will they all close?

Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan Research, says:

“EMMA has struck a fatal blow to The Weekend Australian Magazine and The Australian Financial Review Magazine.

“Rupert Murdoch must be wondering what he has created in EMMA – the predominantly News Corp funded and controlled readership survey designed to eradicate the industry currency Roy Morgan Readership Survey.

“News Corp have for many years sold advertising space in their inserted magazines based on the readership of the host – a sham. However to continue to do so – ignoring even their own designed and funded measurement of the readership of their inserted magazines - will be viewed  with cynicism by media buyers and their advertiser clients and will make it impossible for them to sell advertising in those magazines.”

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