Still reading all about it

Two-thirds of Asia's most senior executives say they regularly read a pan-regional newspaper or magazine, even though they are spending more time online than ever before, and are also thought to be watching more pan-regional television. Ipsos-RSL, the market research network behind the survey, says it shows the resilience of the international print market in the region, which has held up despite the Sars outbreak last year and the continuing threat of terrorism in the region, both of which have dented consumer and business confidence. "Everything's remarkably stable," says Simon Baty, survey director of ABRS with research firm Ipsos-RSL. In the latest results, 66 per cent of respondents said they read an international publication, compared to 68 per cent last time. The research shows that while the rest of the world has been through the wringer between ABRS 7 and ABRS 8 -- the former was conducted right before the September 11 terror attacks in the US -- Asia's leading lights in business have simply been getting on with the job, and if that means picking up a copy of a business title, then that's what they've been doing. In fact, while the Sars outbreak led to many business trips within the region being cancelled in the first half of last year, by the time ABRS questionnaires went out in September, the region's biggest bosses were taking more flights for business than they were even pre-9/11. The average ABRS respondent took 4.3 business trips by air last year compared to 4.1 in the 2001 survey. Non-essential travel was also up, with the average number of holiday flights up to two a year this time compared to 1.8 in the last survey. Singaporeans were clocking up more frequent flier points on business than anyone else in the region, with 41 per cent saying they took six or more flights for the year, and almost a third of Hong Kongers did the same. Executives from the Philippines and South Korea did the least travelling; only 10 per cent and 12 per cent respectively took six or more business trips by air. China was, not surprisingly, the most popular business destination in the region, with one-third of ABRS respondents having been there in the past 12 months, followed by Hong Kong (22 per cent), then Singapore (21 per cent) and Japan (19 per cent). Outside Asia, the UK and Western Europe attracted 22 per cent of the group, while North America was visited by 18 per cent. Indonesians and Malaysians were more likely than other Asian business leaders to fly first class, and Singaporeans were more often checking in to club or business class. Across the entire sample, however, half of these high-rolling executives said they flew economy-class on business trips. Such a confident return to the region's skies is good news on two fronts for pan-regional print titles, both showing hesitant tourism and airline advertising clients that an elite audience is in the market to buy, and they give media owners an opportunity to put back bulk sales to airlines that in many cases were cut back or heavily reduced last year because of Sars. But the readership figures themselves don't give print media owners much reason to cheer, or indeed marketers much reason to change their strategy for reaching high-end consumers. ABRS shows that the average issue readership across the entire survey universe is virtually unchanged for almost every title on the questionnaire. The Asian Wall Street Journal remains the top read among the dailies, read by 16 per cent of respondents, and Time (read by 18 per cent) is the most popular monthly, just ahead of Newsweek (17 per cent), which it overtook in the ABRS rankings in 2001. Annette Nazaroff, research director Asia-Pacific with MindShare, says movements up or down of a percentage point or two are statistically insignificant. "There's nothing in it," she says. The margin for error could in most cases account for any apparent gains or losses, and the sample sizes for readership of many of the titles is already small, so slight movements have a relatively big impact on the results. The survey shows, for example, that Fortune is read by 15 per cent of respondents, down from 16 per cent last time, and Forbes is up from nine per cent to 10 per cent. William Adamopoulos, vice-president and managing director of Forbes Asia-Pacific, sees it differently, however, pointing out that the number of Forbes readers in the survey has gone up from roughly 20,600 to 24,500. "Growing at 18.5 per cent when the average of all the publications was minus 2.2 per cent is a very significant gain for Forbes," he says. The other titles that on first glance appear to be the survey's winners -- the International Herald Tribune (with average issue readership up 33 per cent) and CFO Asia (with AIR rising 13 per cent since the last survey) -- are not quite as they seem. The IHT has indeed grown its share of readers, but from six per cent to eight per cent of the sample, and CFO Asia is now read by nine per cent of the region's top execs, up from eight per cent in 2001. The same goes for the survey's apparent losers. Asia Inc readership is down 25 per cent, from four to three per cent of the ABRS universe, and Yazhou Zhoukan is down 20 per cent, but only from 10 to eight per cent of AIR. The closure in recent years of Asiaweek and Asian Business does not appear to have led to a significant jump in sales for other titles. The region's most senior suits might not be reading more in print, but they are spending more time online. In 1997, ABRS results showed only half were using the internet. Now, that figure has shot up to 92 per cent. But more significant is that apart from email, most senior execs are logging on to look at newspaper and business magazine websites. More, in fact, are looking at print titles' websites than at an actual print publication. Across the ABRS sample, 71 per cent now look at these sites, up from 62 per cent in 2001, 30 per cent in 1999 and 16 per cent in 1997. Like most print media owners to have invested heavily in developing their website, the IHTsays the digital age poses no threat to the ink-and-paper business. "We see them as complementary, rather than competing," says Brian Shields, worldwide research director with the IHT, adding that the paper's owners, the New York Times, actually get more new subscriptions to its paper edition through its website than from any other source. "Everybody predicted the demise of print media when radio and TV came along, but that obviously didn't happen, and there are more print publications now than ever before," he says. Television remains a threat to the print sector, however, and the rival PAX survey last year showed business decision-makers watching ever-higher amounts of news and entertainment on pan-regional television, at the expense of regional print titles. The PAX universe, while also aiming for the top of the market, has a much broader base than Ipsos' survey, but ABRS does not monitor TV-viewing habits in its universe. Mediaedge:cia managing partner Tess Caven says that while print may have suffered at the hands of TV last year, things are already picking up for print this year. "In general, when we talked to the print people at the beginning of the year, they were all saying 'that was a tough year', and the TV people were all saying 'yippee'," she says. "TV took a huge chunk out of print last year." Part of the reason was that by the time Sars was brought under control and advertisers started loosening their purse strings, the amount of prime print space immediately available to them was limited. "A lot of our clients got into TV because it was quicker," says Caven. ABRS 8 shows the continuing health of a sector that critics have said is in decline, but won't be causing any seismic shifts in adspend from one title to another.