2004 Annual Report - Newspaper Audience

In some ways, it is remarkable how long newspaper circulation remained so stable. From World War II until 1970, as the United States saw tremendous economic growth, a rising and changing population, a move to suburbia, and the advent of television, the number of newspapers sold each day in the United States was still growing.

During this time, a smaller percentage of Americans read a newspaper every day - especially after the evolution of TV news in the 1960s. The erosion, however, was outpaced by population growth - a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of U.S. households between 1970 and 1990.³ By 1970, indeed, newspaper reading in the United States had reached a new peak. Some 62 million newspapers were sold in the country every day.⁴

U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation

Weekday and Sunday editions, measured in five-year increments, 1940 to 2000

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Source: Editor and Publisher Yearbook data

By 1990, however, even the boost from a growing population was not enough to maintain how many newspapers were sold each day. Circulation began dropping at the rate of 1 percent every year from 1990 to 2002. By 2002, weekday circulation of U.S. newspapers had dropped 11 percent in 12 years.⁵

The real rate of circulation decline could be even greater. The Audit Bureau of Circulations changed the way it counted circulation to include bulk sales of papers to places like airlines and hotels for free distribution. These sales are technically "bought" by the hotel or airline, often through a barter exchange, but can make up a significant part of total circulation. For example, 46 percent of USA Today's circulation - 987,670 papers - comes from bulk sales.⁶ And the ABC rules have been liberalized in other smaller ways through the years, masking even further the true extent of circulation loss, according to Rick Edmonds at the Poynter Institute who has examined this closely.⁷

The vast majority of circulation loss in the last 30 years has been at afternoon papers, and much of that from papers that ceased publishing. Some other losses in overall circulation since 1990 came from papers purposely trimming delivery to distant outlying communities. Thus some of the loss does not suggest free-fall. Indeed, morning circulation in 2001 was the highest it has ever been - 46.8 million - before declining slightly in 2002 (the first decline in morning circulation since 1975).⁸

To fully appreciate the drop in the newspaper's popularity, it is also useful to take a closer look at so-called "household penetration" - the number of newspapers sold as a percentage of all households in the country. In one sense, penetration reveals the full extent of newspapers' declining appeal. In 1950, 123 percent of households bought a newspaper (in other words there were 1.23 papers sold per household.) By 1990, only 67 percent of households bought a newspaper. By 2000, it was 53 percent.⁹

U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation vs. Number of Households

Number in millions, measured in 10-year increments

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Source: Editor and Publisher Yearbook data; U.S. Census Bureau

In another sense, however, penetration reveals the endurance of newspapers as an advertising medium. While papers were losing audience, their new rivals were more fragmented - multiple television broadcast stations in each town, 40 cable channels and eventually myriad Web sites. Even if the percentage of households buying a newspaper has dropped to almost half, that still makes the lone newspaper in town the most wide-reaching single buy for advertisers.¹⁰

Sunday Circulation

Sunday circulation, for many years, saw a different trend. Newspapers found that many of their readers were tending to read less often, but more on Sundays and a few occasional other days. Advertisers, moreover, wanted to be in the Sunday paper, when people had more time. Sunday papers swelled in size, and thus in appeal, and more papers launched Sunday editions (there were 913 in 2002, up 56 percent from1970).¹¹ As a consequence, while daily circulation after World War II was flat, Sunday circulation continued to grow, peaking in 1990.

Since then, however, Sunday circulation has been dropping too, like weekday, but at a slower pace (0.5 percent annually versus 1 percent for weekdays). By 2002, Sunday circulation was at 58.8 million, down 6 percent since its peak in 1990.¹²