Sunday, November 05, 2006

Newspaper circulation in Taiwan: Liberty Times leads?

I can't remember whether I blogged here or not, but one thing I and many others have noticed since the beginning of the Shih Ming-teh mess was decline in the sales of the pro-Blue newspapers like the United Daily News and China Times, pro-Blue tabloids like Apple Daily, and growth in the pro-Green Liberty Times. My evidence was entirely anecdotal and personal, but ESWN has the numbers up on his website, citing the Liberty Times itself: apparently Liberty Times is now number 1 in Taiwan again.

- Liberty Times: 16.3% (2.81 million persons)
- Apple Daily: 13.5% (2.33 million persons)
- United Daily News: 9.6% (1.65 million persons)
- China Times: 8.7% (1.49 million persons)

Collectively, of course, the pro-Blue papers outsell the pro-Green (a pro-Green newspaper shut down earlier this year, so the numbers may simply reflect switching from one paper to the other. ESWN has also pointed out that the Liberty Times games the survey system to change things in its favor).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think United Daily News or China Times agree that Liberty Times is leading. They will probably claim that their newspapers are read by (rather than "sold to") more people. Every morning, "United China" gives their newspapers free of charge to passengers at almost all MRT stations in Taipei Metropolis. Mmm, they must be making a lot of money from their advertising business so that they can continue to subsidize the free give-aways.

Michael Turton said...

Good point.

Anonymous said...

In the 7-Elevens near where are live (Taipei County) there are always huge piles of the Apple Daily. They often bring in another huge pile of them in the middle of the day.

Maybe it is not as popular down south. Also maybe more businesses subscribe to the other more serious papers wereas the Apple Daily relies more on retail sales.

Battlepanda said...

What was the pro green paper which was shut down?

Michael Turton said...

The Taiwan Erh Bao, the English name was the Taiwan Daily News, I think.

Anonymous said...

Apple Daily depends heavily on the retail channel such as the convenient stores - which means they have very few subscribers. I think AD is the only pro-blue media that plays fair in the market. As for other pro-blue newspapers, they seem to have some rather mysterious offshore investers that keep pumping in large amount of cash. Hence, they don't have to worry about ad incomes per se - apparently their biggest "advertiser/sponsor" with a deep pocket is secured, and that leaves them with only one thing to do - to get out as many copies of propaganda as possible. And there goes the free paper in McDonalds, on the subway or communiting trains or the freeway buses, in the gas station, even when you go shopping at Carrefour. Oh, and if this is too much trouble for you, those nice folks at UDN or CT would call you up, begging you for permission to, well, deliver free prapaganda newspaper to your doorstep. How thoughtful. Courtesy of Big Brother Ma (or Hu?).