The region's rich are not just reading less and watching more, they're switching their subscriptions and changing channels, as the most recent PAX research indicates.
While newspaper and magazine readership has continued its overall decline - at the same time as regional pay-television becomes more accessible - the data shows that many of the biggest winners and losers in the current set of results come from within the same categories.
This suggests a shift in loyalty rather than a wholesale change in the type of news and entertainment that Asia's top earners are looking for.
On TV, for instance, CNN - consistently the second-most popular regional channel in Asia after Discovery Channel - was shown having its worst quarter for viewership in the past year, with a drop across the PAX sample from 2.2 million a year ago to less than 2.1 million in the period, which includes this year's Q3.
Bloomberg TV also had its worst period for the year, down to 249,000 from 273,000 in the previous quarter.
Meanwhile, rival news channels BBC World and CNBC's viewership peaked.
BBC World viewership (past seven days) topped 1.1 million in Q3 this year, compared to 1.04 million late last year, and CNBC's passed 763,000 - up by 100,000 since last year.
"During this last quarter, there has not been what we have to call a significant news event to draw people to international news channels, versus the build-up to and the waging of war 12 months ago," says Tess Caven, managing partner with Mediaedge:cia Singapore.
"Peoplemeter evidence from recent events - such as 9/11 and Gulf War 2 - shows that while viewing of CNN and other news channels goes up during and just post the events, it settles back to pre-event levels within a short time."
Nicole Vooijs, regional business director with Zenith Optimedia, says the magnitude of the apparent drop in CNN viewership was somewhat puzzling.
"We hear from time to time that people are fed up with all the stories on the war in Iraq and that kind of thing, and that could be the case with CNN. The BBC at least still pays attention to other things in life and has more documentaries than CNN, but even so, I didn't think it would be that big (a drop in viewership for CNN)," Vooijs says.
On the print front, the weekly and monthly titles continue to bear the brunt of business leaders' growing distaste for magazines and newspapers.
Average issue readership of any regional weekly slipped to just over 963,000 in the Q3 PAX sample, down from more than one million in late 2002. Readership of biweekly titles fell from 202,000 to 170,000, and of monthlies fell from 1.8 million to 1.6 million. The dailies lost 10 per cent of their readers, down to 97,000 per issue.
"It's a challenge for the regional publishers to remain relevant in very time-bound news situations, whether that's Sars or during the economic decline or now. The publishers have to provide interpretation and analysis that cannot be provided by the instant fix of TV," says Synovate media director Steve Garton.
"I think audiences are quite loyal, and buying a paper or magazine is a habit. Habits are very hard to build, but they can be broken by major events (such as Sars), and in the immediacy of their need to find sources of information to help them, they may have reached out for something they've never read or bought before."
The PAX survey now asks newspaper and magazine subscribers how long they have subscribed, and about their intention to renew.
The first set of this subscription data will be available early next year, Synovate says.
In the meantime, Garton says media owners should not despair over small drops in readership and viewership: "In the current conditions, if you stayed still, you've done extremely well."
AVERAGE ISSUE READERSHIP (10 markets)
Q3 2002 to Q3 2002 to Q4 2002 to
Average issue readership Q1 2003 Q2 2003 Q3 2003
Reader's Digest English 876,652 855,148 809,886
National Geographic 747,287 722,478 683,236
Time 510,708 503,008 481,317
Reader's Digest Chinese 405,720 408,112 405,248
Newsweek 401,881 393,169 372,935
BusinessWeek 255,900 240,281 229,568
The Economist 171,240 159,856 157,775
BusinessTraveller 165,154 163,281 141,506
Fortune 157,766 155,446 146,118
Yazhou Zhoukan 117,110 123,561 123,909
Asiamoney 108,958 111,621 113,882
Far Eastern Economis Review 72,170 73,930 81,264
CFO Asia 63,754 60,333 54,072
Asia Inc. 61,366 57,485 48,188
Forbes Global 51,230 50,582 48,379
Asian Wall Street Journal 51,089 49,982 46,807
Financial Times 43,653 41,858 35,122
Internation Herald Tribune 21,003 22,208 19,440
USA Today 14,017 16,781 18,186
Source: Synovate.
PAST 7 DAYS VIEWERSHIP (11 markets)
Q3 2002 to Q3 2002 to Q4 2002 to
Q1 2003 Q2 2003 Q3 2003
Discovery Channel 2,677,699 2,685,832 2,731,567
CNN 2,092,237 2,104,588 2,082,364
National Geographic Channel 2,074,936 2,062,288 2,018,672
HBO 1,803,493 1,788,629 1,789,385
MTV 1,453,475 1,506,143 1,590,807
STAR Movies 1,318,779 1,285,936 1,253,683
ESPN 1,190,878 1,216,736 1,202,384
BBC World 1,057,267 1,085,119 1,108,680
STAR Sports 1,015,420 1,002,289 965,972
Cartoon Network 911,300 938,778 937,790
Zee TV 741,286 728,569 752,908
AXN Asia 734,693 792,741 789,184
CNBC 715,026 745,749 763,558
Cinemax 713,746 702,526 686,592
Animal Planet 695,391 692,632 716,686
Channel (V) 669,822 664,190 639,519
STAR World 547,392 561,713 550,155
Phoenix Chinese Channel 466,374 457,594 456,370
Channel NewsAsia 446,922 446,336 434,502
Source: Synovate.