NEWSPAPER readership has remained steady despite the demise of the three Irish Press titles, according to the latest readership figures from the Joint National Readership Research.
The figures show other Irish titles have absorbed the former Irish Press readers. The main beneficiary from the collapse of the Irish Press titles is the Independent Group.
Figures for the 12 months from July 1995 to June 1996, compared to the previous 12 months, show a jump of 77,000 readers for the Irish Independent, with The Irish Times down 2,000. The Star is up 28,000, while the Cork Examiner, since renamed the Examiner, is down 19,000. The Evening Herald is up 71,000, while the Cork Evening Echo is down 2,000.
The Sunday Independent is up 213,000, the Sunday World up 96,000, the Sunday Tribune down 24,000 and the Sunday Business Post up 3,000.
However, in the circulation figures the six-month measurement of daily sales, rather than the yearly measure of readership, gives a different picture.
For six months up to June of this year The Irish Times has scored its highest daily sales ever, with 101,223. The Irish In dependent is down from 160,400 for the last six months of 1995 to 157,393 for January to June of this year. However, the Irish Independent is up by 7 per cent when the first six months of this year is compared to the same period last year.
The Examiner also shows a slight increase for the six months to June of this year compared to the previous six months, presumably reflecting the marketing effort involved in relaunching the Examiner. Both the Star and the Evening Herald show small falls in sales. The Sunday Independent is down from 339,069 to 336,849. The Sunday Tribune is down from 82,569 to 79,180.
The presence of the Irish Press titles in the period between January and June 1995 (they closed in May 1995) distorts comparisons between the first six months of 1995 and 1996. The July-to-December figure for 1995 and January to June 1996 are more comparable because they are the first two six-month periods when the Irish Press and its sister titles were not published.
It could be that the most recent figures show surviving newspaper sales settling down after a sudden boost from the demise of the Press group.
Only The Irish Times, the Examiner and the Sunday Business Post show circulation increases. Figures for the July-December period for 1995 for the Sunday World were not available. The Sunday World's current circulation is 223,364, compared to 209,251 for January to June of last year.
Industry sources, seeking to explain the difference between the readership figures and the audited circulation figures, point to the difference in the measuring techniques used. The circulation figures are audited sales figures, while the readership figures are based on a survey.
The other factor is that audited figures are six-monthly, which might be a more accurate measure of a trend than the broad sweep of the survey of readers.
The JNRR, undertaken by Lansdowne Market Research, also produces a profile of the type of person who reads each title, based on the answers respondents give to a series of questions about their lives and attitudes.
For instance, 13.6 per cent of Irish Times readers are categorised as extrovert, compared to 14.7 per cent of Irish Independent readers. The Irish Times reader is more likely to be non-conformist, with 16.9 per cent, compared with 7.5 per cent of Irish Independent readers.
Some 22.8 per cent of Irish Times readers are cultured, compared with 16.4 per cent of Independent readers, while Independent readers are much more likely to be homely people.
The Sunday Independent readers do not differ radically from readers of the Irish Independent.
Surprisingly, only 5.9 per cent of readers of the Sunday Business Post were reported to be ambitious, compared with 21 per cent of the Sunday World's readers.