The Herald tops readership market

Thursday, 29 September 2011 02:00

http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=224...

Herald Reporter

MORE than 1,8 million Zimbabwean adults read The Herald, almost twice as many as its nearest competitor, according to an in-depth and independent survey commissioned by the advertising industry.

The Herald dominates both urban and rural markets.
During the second quarter of this year, the Zimbabwe All Media Products and Services Survey estimated that 1 820 018 adults read The Herald, around 27 percent of the entire adult population, urban and rural.

Penetration was better in urban areas, as with all newspapers, and The Herald was read by 34 percent of the entire adult urban population; about 23 percent of the entire rural adult population said they read The Herald.
This keeps The Herald at the top of total, urban and rural readership lists, as it has been for 12 decades.
The newspaper celebrated the 120th anniversary of its first issue in July and throughout this entire period has been the most widely-read paper.

In second place was Daily News.
With only 986 167 adult readers, its readership is just above half The Herald's.
Its readership tends to be urban concentrated, so it has 22 percent of urban adults in its readership, just over 60 percent of The Herald's urban total but only 10 percent of the rural adults read the paper, just over a third of The Herald total.

But Daily News, while well behind The Herald, has just edged Newsday out of second place, although the two are neck-and-neck in urban markets, 22 percent for Daily News versus 21 percent for Newsday, with a slightly wider rural gap, 10 percent for Daily News versus 8 percent for Newsday.

The wider gap is noticed as well in total penetration.
Daily News reaches just 15 percent of adult Zimbabweans, while Newsday manages a lower 13 percent.
In fourth and fifth places are two more Zimbabwe Newspapers titles.

The Herald's tabloid stablemate, H-Metro is in fourth place among urban dwellers, with 17 percent of urban Zimbabweans reading it, but in fifth place overall with 9 percent thanks to poorer rural sales.
Chronicle, with a more balanced distribution, is in fourth place overall with 11 percent but fifth place among urban readers with 15 percent.
However, Chronicle is read by 42 percent of people who listed Ndebele as their home language, so must have high readership rates in the western three provinces, its home area.

Zamps is put out by the Zimbabwe Advertising Research Foundation, a trust that is backed by all major adverting agencies and the major publishing houses.
The foundation is funded by a small levy on advertising, regardless of where this advertising is placed, so is financially independent of any media house, whether an agency or a media owner.
The foundation in turn hires an independent research group, Research Bureau International, to conduct the actual survey.
The foundation's role is limited to paying for the work and publishing the results.

The desire of the advertising industry when it set up the foundation was to have this double hands-off system so that the results were totally independent of any organisation involved in the media and totally free of manipulation or bias.

The Herald's dominance is reflected by the importance the advertising market places in the newspaper.
Today's edition of The Herald has 66 pages, the equivalent of 132 tabloid pages, with a high advertising load to accompany the usual high-volume editorial content.

In fact, The Herald devotes each day more space to news and views than any of its competitors devote to editorial and advertising combined.
Zimpapers Group Chief Executive Mr Justin Mutasa welcomed the Zamps results saying they confirmed the company's dominance of the newspaper market.

"Our strategy to diversify our product portfolio to cater for all market segments has paid off very well with Zamps confirming that 70 percent of Zimbabwean newspaper readers read the company's titles on a daily basis and 55 percent weekly.

"As the market leader, Zimpapers strives to provide products that suit everybody's needs. The results show that in the daily market, out of the 6 749 million readers, 4,7 million read The Herald, H-Metro, Chronicle or B-Metro (before it was converted to a weekly newspaper), making us a part of Zimbabweans' everyday life.
"In the same market, our competitors Daily News, NewsDay and Mail (before its closure) shared the remaining 30 percent.

"In the weekly market, about 3,7 million readers read The Sunday Mail, Sunday News, Manica Post, Southern Times, Kwayedza or uMthunywa.
"It is interesting to note that our two vernacular newspapers are performing much better than the competition. uMthunywa, which is a Bulawayo-based Ndebele-language publication, has the same level of readership as The Independent while Kwayedza, a Mashonaland-based Shona-language publication had the same readership as the Standard. The Mutare-based Manica Post, with its regional thrust, had better readership than the Financial Gazette, Independent and Standard.

The Sunday Mail maintained its poll position as the leading Sunday newspaper at 24 percent of the market.
"As part of our continuing effort to improve our product offering, we are currently redesigning all our publications to make them more appealing to our readers in terms of both content and design. We started with The Herald, which is the newspaper industry super brand, and the response from the market has been overwhelming.
"We do not take our readers for granted and we will always strive to respond to their needs through continuous innovation. Our online readership is growing by leaps and bounds as we embrace technological changes. The Herald emerged as the most read publication online.

"We are now on the verge of launching our mobile newspaper in order to improve accessibility for all our readers.
"With our diversified product range, we have been able to grow our readership on various platforms with some readers preferring to access us online on Facebook or Twitter, among others, while others migrated from either The Herald or Chronicle to H-Metro or B-Metro respectively.

"What is of concern to us as a pacesetter in the newspaper industry is the overall decline in print newspaper readership by 3 percent over the last quarter. However, we are encouraged by the growth in online readership which went up to 196 273 people reading The Herald every day. It is important for the advertising industry to make use of this platform.

"It is also interesting to note that the number of women reading our newspapers has grown from 36 to 41 percent for The Herald and 45 to 48 percent for H-Metro. The number of young people reading the same two newspapers also grew from 13 percent to 15 percent (The Herald) and from 21 to 24 percent for H-Metro."