More and more digital readers
Despite a further decline in circulation, readers remain loyal to Swiss newspapers. More than one in three media consumers uses the publishers' online offerings. Of these, one in five is a dual user, i.e. reads print and online offerings.
The printed editions of the private media houses in Switzerland continue to enjoy great popularity, with an overall reach of 95 percent, as the AG für Werbemittelforschung (Wemf) announced on Tuesday in its fall publication on the readership figures of Swiss media.
"The publishers can thus continue to drive digitization from a position of strength," said Harald Amschler, Head of Research and Member of the Executive Board at Wemf. Despite all the prophecies of doom, young people in Switzerland also read newspapers regularly, especially commuter newspapers. The advertising industry is turning away from the traditional daily newspaper in a kind of herd instinct. In doing so, they are forgetting that the printed newspaper still occupies an eminently important place in the media mix of the Swiss population, Amschler continued.
Digital on the rise
Numerous print titles are succeeding very well in anchoring digital offerings on the market in parallel with newspaper readership. Demand for journalistically prepared information on smartphones is currently growing strongly. This is reflected in the figures for the use of press titles and web offerings (total audience). The big titles in particular are benefiting more than average from this development. 20 Minuten is clearly in the lead with its three editions in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland and in Ticino. Its net reach is just under 2.8 million readers, with almost half already using digital offerings.
View is digitally strong
Blick reaches a net audience of just over 1.16 million readers. It is the only Swiss media company that currently has a larger user base on digital channels than in print. The commuter newspaper Blick am Abend, on the other hand, is primarily used as a print edition. This also applies to SonntagsBlick.
The situation is similar for the Tages-Anzeiger. It is read by 656,000 people, with the readership of the print title still twice as high as that of the digital edition. This is more or less also true for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which has a readership of just under 400,000 people.
Regional newspapers catch up
The traditional regional newspapers have relatively fewer digital readers, although the trend here is also clearly moving in the direction of digitization. AZ Nordwestschweiz, for example, has a reach of 427,000 people, 79,000 of whom are on digital channels. The ratio of digital readership to print at Berner Zeitung/Bund is just under a third, with a reach of 412,000 people. Luzerner Zeitung has a total readership of 327,000, while St. Galler Tagblatt reaches 289,000. The web offerings are still little used.
Western Switzerland develops similarly
The picture is similar in French-speaking Switzerland. The French-language edition of 20 Minuten achieves the greatest reach with a good 700,000 readers. Around one in three reads the commuter paper digitally. This also applies to the weekly edition of Le Matin, which has a total readership of 346,000. At 24 Heures, the figure is 221,000. In Ticino, the print and online editions of 20 minuti are almost equal in terms of readership. They reach 145,000 people. The Corriere del Ticino is read by 137,000 people, with little use of the digital edition. (SDA)
