Numbers: Our Data Library

Newspaper readership—the number of different people who read a newspaper each week—is a higher number than circulation. While declining, still over half of adult Americans say they read a paper regularly.

Newspaper readership has long skewed old. What is new, and worrisome for the industry, is that the readership percentage has begun to decline across all age groups, even those over 50.

Historically, newspaper readership has risen with education. What is worrying newspaper executives is that the numbers have begun to drop across all education levels.

Newspaper readership has begun declining across all races and ethnicities. By 2005, Caucasians were the only ethnic group in which the majority of adults read a newspaper regularly.

The fall in network evening news audiences has been clear and relatively steady. In November 1980, 52 million Americans watched the nightly news each night. By November 2006, that number had fallen to 26.1 million.

Since 1980, there have been three distinct winners in the network news audience race. In the 1980s, CBS was dominant. From 1989 to 1996, ABC dominated. Since then, with occasional exceptions, NBC has enjoyed a narrower advantage.

Alternative weekly newspapers have become a growth industry. Unlike general interest daily papers, since 1989 the readership of these papers--with their long stories, personals, entertainment-and-culture coverage and listings--have grown steadily.

Revenues at Spanish language daily and weekly newspapers saw strong growth between 2003 and 2004. All the papers had a good 2005.

Despite a dip in circulation numbers in 2004, the growth in Spanish language newspaper sales stands in stark contrast to the problems of their English language daily newspaper counterparts.