Herald confirms its place as NZ's top-selling paper

Newspaper circulation figures released today confirm the Herald as the country's biggest-selling newspaper.

And in its first ABC audit, the new Herald on Sunday has achieved the country's third highest circulation.

The Herald's average daily circulation in the six months to March 31 was 204,549, making it more than twice as big as any other daily paper. That is down from 208,419 six months ago and 211,490 a year ago.

The paper's publisher, APN New Zealand, said the drop was "as anticipated" in a period in which the company introduced the Herald on Sunday to give readers a newspaper seven days a week.

"Readership patterns have changed and we have adapted to meet those challenges. We have achieved this by publishing a newspaper every day, introducing the community magazine The Aucklander and growing our website," said chief executive Ken Steinke.

The Herald on Sunday average sale was 101,355.

Mr Steinke said the circulation audit showed that total Sunday newspaper sales had risen by 86,379, or 27 per cent, year-on-year. This confirmed that one of APN's main objectives, growing the Sunday market, had been achieved.

Across the two Herald titles, APN had sold about 60,000 extra newspapers each week.

"It's the kind of market growth we could not have achieved any other way," he said. "We are very happy with the results. We now have an extremely strong portfolio of publications."

Herald on Sunday publisher Rick Neville said research showed one third of the new compact paper's retail buyers had not previously bought a Sunday paper. A similar number now added the Herald on Sunday to their existing reading.

In other results, the broadsheet Sunday Star-Times saw circulation fall from 209,143 to 203,647 year-on-year and the tabloid Sunday News dropped by 8.6 per cent, from 110,759 to 101,279.

Wellington's Dominion Post fell by about 1 per cent to 98,232.