OTHER CITIES: VANCOUVER MONTREAL

Toronto Sun Drops Again

Posted by Tim
Filed in City
March 25, 2006

The Globe and Mail reported today that most of the traditional newspapers in the city continue to face declines in readership at the hands of the free dailies.

The big loser continues to be the Toronto Sun. Its cumulative weekly readership dropped 6.8% in the past year to 1.2 million adult readers. The Toronto Star also saw declines, falling 4.7% to 2.02 million readers.

Surprisingly, the National Post rose .8% to 477,000 readers although their Saturday readership was down 20%. The Globe's readership was flat at 847,200.

Even though the Sun continues to hemorage, not all was doom and gloom for Sun Media. 24 Hours realized a 27.2% jump in its readership and is now closing in on Metro which only had a 4.6% increase. If these trends continue, it won't be much longer until 24 Hour's readership exceeds that of the Sun.

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"If these trends continue, it won't be much longer until 24 Hour's readership exceeds that of the Sun."

Yeah, well why buy a crappy paper when you can get a crappy paper for free? ;)

- (ex-Sun Media employee) J.

Posted by: Jay at March 25, 2006 7:31 PM

I received a Leger Marketing Survey (at least I think it was Leger)in my inbox the other day that asked me to fill out a wide variety of questions about what I liked/disliked about the Toronto Sun. Some of the questions were quite direct like: "do you find the Toronto Sun to be a racist newspaper?" Anyway, it was pretty wide and detailed for a survey, which leads me to believe they are thinking/reflecting seriously about re-positioning the paper in the not-so-distant future. Personally, I hope so. For as much as I dislike The Sun, I can see its potential and I like the fact that Torontonions (unlike most North Americans) have an exceedingly wide choice in terms of daily local newspapers.

Posted by: Jason Paris at March 25, 2006 10:26 PM