News

An increasing number of Canadians are reading their newspapers online, according to the latest readership numbers released yesterday by the Newspaper Audience Databank Inc.

The figures, gleaned by NADbank from surveys conducted in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007, show that for many newspapers Internet readership is growing faster than for their print versions.

Still, overall newspaper readership is relatively stable in Canada, in contrast to the state of the industry in the United States where readership, circulation and advertising revenue have been slumping.

The NADbank figures show that in Toronto, for example, every one of the daily papers, when compared with last year's numbers, had more subscribers who responded they had read an issue online over the previous seven days.

The free daily 24 Hours had the biggest gains in online readership, more than doubling its number to 88,300 from 43,700.

Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa showed similar patterns.

For the printed product, there was volatility in readership in some markets, but over all about 47 per cent of Canadians read a newspaper every day, and almost three-quarters look at one at least once a week, NADbank said.

In Toronto, the biggest paper continues to be the Star, which has about 987,000 readers on weekdays, and 1,276,000 on Saturdays.

In Montreal, Le Journal de Montreal leads with 626,000 readers on weekdays and 663,000 on Saturday. The Vancouver Sun is the top paper in that city, with 482,000 weekday readers and 524,000 on Saturday. The Citizen leads in Ottawa, with 253,000 on weekdays and 293,000 on Saturdays.

Among the two national paid dailies, The Globe and Mail had 574,000 weekday readers in the four cities and 590,000 on Saturday. The National Post had 337,000 weekday readers and 315,000 on Saturday.

"The industry is actually enjoying a period of relative stability at a time when, in the United States, you're seeing some fairly sizable drops in circulation and ad revenues," said Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley. "Our industry is not in the same kind of trouble." He said many readers are looking at newspaper websites in addition to reading the printed version, but are not replacing one with the other.

Canadian Newspaper Association president Anne Kothawala said newspaper readers still represent a key demographic group, with high levels of disposable income.