A second consecutive NADbank study showing little change in readership for the National Post and the Globe and Mail seems to indicate that the national newspaper war is over.

Despite claims of gains made by each of the big three publishers, stability seems to have arrived. The latest numbers, from NADbank 2002, released March 28, show the Globe boasting about 2.4 million weekly readers nationally, versus 1.7 million for the Post. Meanwhile in the Greater Toronto Area, the Globe has settled in with 448,000 read-yesterdays, compared to 225,200 for the Post and 1,037,300 for the Toronto Star.

‘The only thing that really got my attention was the fact that the Globe and Mail pulled ahead of the National Post in Vancouver,’ says Chris Herlihey, director of research for Initiative Media in Toronto.

Mariam Hoosen, VP, print investment director of Starcom Worldwide in Toronto, was similarly underwhelmed, most especially by the few percentage points the National Post regained since the drop in readership numbers released in the interim report of fall 2002. That report showed the GTA’s read-yesterday readership for the Post dropped from 285,600 to 221,100 readers.

‘The National Post was definitely not as successful as it should have been in the Toronto market, given its recent focus here,’ Hoosen says.

Steve Rosenblum, director of research at media management firm HYPN in Toronto, was only slightly more enthusiastic about the National Post’s readership numbers.

‘It’s true that it’s not all of what they lost since 2001, but the numbers do show the Post has stabilized and that the marketing efforts they’ve made in the GTA have started to work,’ Rosenblum says. ‘And the National Post is still definitely a player on the national scene. But they should turn their efforts to recovering in Vancouver and Montreal now.’

Many media buyers agree with Rosenblum, saying that both the National Post and the Globe and Mail claim enough exclusive readers to make national advertising in both publications advisable.

‘They may have suffered in the GTA, but the Post is definitely still a player in the national market,’ says Bruce Claassen, president of Toronto’s Genesis Media.

National Post publisher Peter Viner was more than happy to concur, claiming the Post’s exclusive readers are the kind of audience high-end advertisers want to reach.

‘We’re talking about 72% of our weekday readership that the Globe isn’t getting,’ says Viner, adding that regaining ground in Montreal and Vancouver will be ‘easier, given that we have an unfair advantage outside the Toronto market, because we can market the Post through other CanWest-owned dailies.’

The promise of the Post’s future recovery in Vancouver and Montreal has done little, however, to dampen the enthusiasm of Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley.

‘The Vancouver numbers are especially satisfying,’ Crawley says, with a chuckle. ‘The fact that the Post’s numbers have fallen in Vancouver and Montreal makes it very difficult for them to convince anyone that they have staying power.’

Rosenblum, however, is quick to point out that the National Post’s losses in the Vancouver and Montreal markets have not resulted in any gains for the Globe and Mail.

Happiest of all, of course, is the Toronto Star, still the leader in the GTA.

‘In fact, if you crunch the numbers for the spring-to-fall 2002 period, we come out with close to a 1% gain,’ Toronto Star publisher John Honderich points out.

The gain has done little to impress buyers, though.

‘It just shows that they’ve managed to put a stop to the drop they were experiencing before,’ Rosenblum says.

Montreal’s French-language market, meanwhile, is still assessing the effect the arrival of five-day transit papers has had. The first NADbank results for Montreal’s newest arrivals were released in the fall interim report.

But publishers and buyers alike agree the transit papers will do little to unseat dailies like La Presse and Le Journal de Montréal (which comes first with Montreal’s French-language readers).

‘The people who read the transit papers tend to be younger, with a lower income, and there are no Saturday or Sunday transit papers,’ points out Sylvie Chartré, VP of media for Montreal’s PALM Publicité Marketing.

‘So they represent a different target market. I wouldn’t say the transit papers have necessarily taken away readership from the Journal de Montréal, even if their numbers fell.’

Jean Durocher, VP of marketing for La Presse, part-owner of Métro, the strongest transit paper, agrees.

‘We don’t really see the transit papers as competition for dailies,’ he says. ‘We see them rather as a way to develop new daily readers. Once people get a taste for reading the news in transit papers, they may move on to dailies.’

French-language transit papers certainly appear to have had little effect on the English-language reader. The Montreal Gazette has actually shown growth since 2001 – from 338,200 or 12.2% read-yesterday readers to 377,100 or 14% read-yesterday readers.

The Gazette claims to be pursuing an allophone market, which consists of readers who could conceivably be recruited by French-language papers as well.

‘The people whose first language is neither English nor French, those are the readers we’re after,’ publisher Larry Smith says. ‘And that’s where we’re making our gains.’

Be that as it may, media buyers are getting far more excited by NADbank’s newly released content readership data than they are by readership results which show little change.

‘I was amazed to see that 76% of readers 18 to 24 are actually reading local news, Starcom’s Hoosen says of the content readership data. ‘I thought they would be 100% in the sports section.’

Genesis’ Claassen, for his part, wasn’t surprised by the data, but he was pleased with NADbank’s research effort along those lines.

‘This is the really useful information,’ he says. ‘This is where buyers can find out who they can reach, how and where. There’s a depth of data there that is really much more useful to marketers than just the straight readership numbers.’