Afrikaans newspapers still buoyant and in touch with readers

Last year in the same period a strong circulation builder competition was run together with 7de Laan, which was not repeated this year. This years' ABC for the 3 Afrikaans Dailies are real sales figures. All three Afrikaans dailies, Beeld, Die Burger and Volksblad still show buoyant growth over the last 20 years (see graph included). Beeld shows a very stable circulation over the past 15 years with a circulation of 101,972 in 2005. This is slightly higher than the 101,460 obtained in 1990. Die Burger shows significant growth from a circulation of 76,228 in 1990 to a circulation of 102,901 in 2005. Volksblad had a circulation of 25,596 in 1990 and for the first six months of this year it was 28,207 which indicate significant growth for a mature daily.

The real good news for Afrikaans dailies is the exceptional performance of the tabloid Son, which is sold daily in the Western Cape from Monday to Thursday and on Fridays as a national weekly. There is currently no official ABC figure for the daily issue but unaudited sales figures show that sales are already running above 50,000 copies per day. This more than compensates for the 6,612 copy sales lost by Die Burger in 2005.

Adding this figure to that of Beeld, Volksblad and Die Burger shows a total circulation increase for Afrikaans Dailies from 243901 for the period Jan-June 2004 to 283,080 in 2005, an upward trend of 16%. Compare this to the 203,284 total sales of Afrikaans dailies in 1990, 245,559 total sales in 2000 and it is clear that Afrikaans speakers still prefer to read news in their mother tongue, whether it be business- or hard news.

The Afrikaans editors certainly know their market. When Securicor came in as sponsor for Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria and it was decided to change the stadium's name to Securicor Park, Beeld ran a series of front page lead stories lambasting the move. The rugby bosses wisely gave in to the flood of public indignation and named it Securicor Loftus.



Trends show Afrikaans speakers prefer Afrikaans Newspapers

An analysis of the All Media and Products Survey (AMPS) for the past 4 years shows that Afrikaans speakers have a growing preference for Afrikaans newspapers. It is clear from the graph below that there has been a steady increase in the percentage of Afrikaans home language speakers that indicate that they prefer reading both their daily and weekly newspapers in their home language. In 2001 17.5% of Afrikaans home language speakers indicated that thy read an Afrikaans daily. This figure has jumped to 19.8% in 2004. For the same period their preference for reading English dailies declined from 11.4% to 10.4%. This indicates a growing preference amongst Afrikaans home language speakers for content in their own language.
The 3 Traditional Afrikaans Dailies also have an 88% exclusive readership. Proof that Afrikaans speakers prefer to only read their favourite newspaper - published in their mother tongue.

In a recent qualitative reader research that was done by Idea8 for Media24 newspapers, 64% of readers of Die Burger indicated they primarily buy the paper because it is published in Afrikaans and they prefer to read in Afrikaans. The result for Beeld, which has even more English competitors, was 79% and 65% for Volksblad.

These facts clearly show that although ABC figures for the 3 traditional Afrikaans daily newspapers for the period Jan-June 2005 may show a slight decline this is definitely not a trend that has anything to do with a rejection of content by readers. The opposite is probably more true, Afrikaans speakers today, are more loyal to newspapers in their mother tongue than 15 years ago and total circulation of Afrikaans Dailies is increasing.