A Hint of Change in the Air

The region's richest consumers are increasingly turning to international newspapers for their daily serving of news and commentary, with all four regional dailies showing growth in the latest PAX survey, conducted by Synovate. While their combined readership across all 10 markets measured still pales in comparison to the likes of Time and Newsweek, theirs was the only category in which all titles showed growth in the average number of people reading each issue. The Financial Times, with its well-received Asian edition, now reaches the same number of PAX respondents as rival the Asian Wall Street Journal, and has again outperformed the AWSJ among readers in top management positions. The FT was also named best regional newspaper at the recent annual Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards for editorial excellence, for what judges said was an "incredibly strong debut". The AWSJ was runner-up, but also won honours in four sections of the contest, for excellence in feature writing, opinion writing, reporting and business reporting. The FT won the best design prize for regional newspapers. "The FT's Asia edition has been very well-received by both readers and advertisers since the launch last September," an FT spokesperson says. "We have always been keen to stress that we are aiming for long-term sustainable circulation growth rather than a short-term boost, and things are progressing well in this area." The International Herald Tribune also showed significant growth in its relatively small readership in Asia, up from 0.3 per cent to 0.4 per cent of the PAX sample in 10 markets, although it lost some ground among top management, and USA Today attracted 0.6 per cent of top managers (up from 0.4 per cent in the last survey), and 0.3 per cent of the total sample, up from 0.2 per cent. USA Today marketing spokesman Steve Anderson says the increase was a result of sales efforts directed at American-brand hotels to target Americans abroad. There is, of course, a limit to how significantly this will affect readership, and the paper is not expecting to return to the days of 14,000-plus copies sold a day in Asia, as seen in the early '90s, for some considerable time. Among the news weeklies, Time is still top of the tree, read by 5.8 per cent of respondents across 10 markets (up slightly from 5.7 per cent during the last survey period), followed by Newsweek with 4.7 per cent (down from 4.8 per cent), Business Week with 2.5 per cent (down from 2.7 per cent) and The Economist, which maintained average issue readership of 1.7 per cent. The Far Eastern Economic Review is read by one per cent of the PAX sample. Newsweek does, however, seem to be closing the gap among readers in top management; in this elite group, Time is read by 8.6 per cent of people, compared to 8.4 per cent who read Newsweek and 6.1 per cent who look at Business Week. The race is especially close in Sydney, where Newsweek is published within localised Australian title The Bulletin. There, Time's local edition, Time South Pacific, is more widely read across the total PAX universe (10.3 per cent of people read it, compared with 8.8 per cent for Newsweek), but among top managers, 18.6 per cent read Newsweek, compared with 11.7 per cent for Time. At the SOPA awards for editorial excellence this year, Newsweek was awarded for excellence in magazines for its "chilling and prescient investigative reporting", ahead of Time Asia, although Time took top honours for best magazine design, best cover design, best news photography, best feature photography, excellence in human rights reporting and the best special edition, for its 'Journey home' issue. Time and Fortune marketing services director Sherrin Loh does not see Time and Newsweek as direct competitors. "I don't think it is an issue of stealing readership from one another. While both are newsweeklies, we are both quite different products -- Newsweek positioning itself as a international newsweekly, while Time Asia is a global news magazine with regional perspective." The publisher's sister title, Fortune, held steady with average issue readership of 1.6 per cent of those questioned -- no great surprise given that more than 92 per cent of circulation is from subscriptions -- and rival fortnightly Forbes is read by 0.6 per cent of the sample. The more general reads, National Geographic and Reader's Digest, both lost readers across the total PAX sample, but held on to or grew their number of top management readers. Reader's Digest's English and many local-language editions were read by 14.4 per cent of the total sample, down from 14.9 per cent, but among top managers was read by 21.1 per cent of people, the same as in the last survey. National Geographic reached 7.4 per cent of all respondents (a drop from 7.9 per cent), but 8.8 per cent of top managers, an increase from the 8.6 per cent posted last time. PAX is a rolling quarterly survey that looks at readership in Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, India, Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok. The current results relate to the period Q2 last year to Q1 this year. The previous survey period was Q1 2003 to Q4 2003. Meanwhile, in TV, elite consumers' favourite international news channel, CNN, has lost its long-held position as the most-watched pan-regional channel after Discovery. The latest PAX results, which show viewership of almost all the news channels dropping slightly, puts National Geographic ahead of CNN in terms of past seven days viewing. Duncan Morris, vice-president of research at Turner International Asia, says the drop in viewership was heavily influenced by a small decline in one market, Tokyo, and does not change CNN's status as the most-watched international news channel in the region. Rufus Western, BBC World's research manager for Southeast Asia, says: "I think all the news channels went down to one extent or another. The obvious reason is that there were less big news events in the latest quarter or so." The latest instalment of the rolling quarterly survey spans Q2 last year to Q1 this year. The previous one looked at Q1 to Q4 last year. Equally, Western points out, while a not-so-newsy quarter has been added to the figures, a very newsy quarter -- Q1 of last year, when the Iraq war was just getting started -- has been dropped from the latest set of numbers, making the contrast even more marked. He says the overall effect, though, is of quite stable, gradual growth, particularly in markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore, thanks to greater distribution. The gap between CNN's and BBC's viewing is smallest in Australia, where BBC World says that during big breaking news events, the number turning on to BBC World is bigger than the flow to CNN -- the reverse of what happens in every other Asian market. In Sydney, PAX shows CNN viewership at 22 per cent across the whole sample, compared with BBCWorld's 16.3 per cent. Both channels attribute this to Australia's colonial history, the strong presence of BBC content on terrestrial Australian TV, and the long-running presence the BBC brand has in that market. While it was bad news for the messengers of news this time around, the PAX survey brought good news for the general entertainment channels, and not just National Geographic. Sport was a winner in the latest survey, and one slight surprise in the latest results is the growth in viewership of children's television by this affluent group of adults. Turner's Morris says that between one-third and half of all viewers to Cartoon Network are adults, something that advertisers are increasingly paying attention to, using children's programming to reach adult consumers. "Part of it's pure escapism, and some of it is nostalgia for things like Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo," he says. "And, of course, part of it is co-viewing -- affluent businesspeople have kids too."