Herald on Sunday posts strong readership

New readership figures for New Zealand newspapers show that the Herald on Sunday has become the best-read Sunday paper in the top half of the North Island.

The compact paper, sister-publication of the New Zealand Herald, was already number one in the Auckland market, but in the 2005 Nielsen Media Research figures for those aged 15 and over, released today, it has extended that leadership to the critical region from Taupo north, home to 53 per cent of the country's population.

The Herald on Sunday is now read by 332,000 people a week with 303,000 in the northern region and 203,000 in Auckland, where it is 9 per cent higher than its nearest competitor.

Its success means that when combined with owner APN's Saturday morning Weekend Herald, the country's highest-read paper at 628,000, fully 85 per cent of weekend newspapers read in Auckland are from the Herald stable.

The Fairfax-owned Sunday Star-Times saw its readership fall overall by 50,000 to below 600,000 and by 24 per cent to 187,000 in the Auckland market. Its much smaller tabloid sister, the Sunday News was down 34,000 readers nationwide.

The daily Herald's average readership, which, at 547,000 is down from about 590,000 the year before, remains double that of any other daily paper. About one million people each week read at least one copy of the Herald.

On the web, APN's nzherald.co.nz drew between 360,000 and 390,000 readers per week during February. Average daily readers last Monday to Friday were over 115,000. The website ranks third in New Zealand, behind Trade Me and XtraMSN, according to the latest monthly visitor figures from Nielsen//NetRatings.