Canadians still seem to prefer thumbing through magazines rather than swiping.
While approximately 9% of Canadians currently own a tablet or e-reader, new data from the Print Measurement Bureau suggests they are not adversely affecting traditional magazine readership.
Released in conjunction with its bi-annual magazine readership survey, the new PMB report shows that approximately 4% of Canadians currently own an Apple iPad, followed by the Kindle, Kobo and Sony e-readers at an estimated 1%.
The data indicates that tablet/e-reader owners skew younger, with people aged 35-49 14 times more likely than the average Canadian to own one of the devices and 12-34 year-olds 11 times more likely. Tablet/e-reader owners are also 46 times more likely than the average Canadian to have a household income in excess of $100,000.
The PMB study shows that readership of print magazines by tablet/e-readers owners is consistent with that of the average Canadian, with 77% of owners indicating they have read a printed magazine in the past month, 82% indicating they have read a print title in the past two months and 85% in the past three months.
The Spring 2012 study also indicated that readership of the 93 print titles common to recent PMB studies was steady at around 1 million readers. The new Spring 2012 study also produced a slight 2% increase in the average number of readers-per-copy, to 5.03 from 4.94 in the Fall 2011 study.
The data also indicated that magazine readership among younger Canadians is consistent with older age groups, with PMB reporting that 12-24 year-olds currently read 3.6 issues of PMB-measured titles every month compared with the national average of 3.7 for all age groups.
Canadians 12+ spent an average of 41 minutes reading a magazine, consistent with prior surveys, while the number of reading occasions was also steady at 2.2. The average degree of interest in magazines, measured on a scale of 1-10, was 6.8, consistent with the Fall 2011 (6.9) and Spring 2011 (6.8) reports.
Reader’s Digest is the most widely read magazine in Canada, with 5.3 million readers 12+. It is followed by Canadian Living (3.9 million), Canadian Geographic (3.4 million), Kraft’s custom title What’s Cooking (3.3 million) and Chatelaine (3.3 million).
Qu-est-ca qui mijote is the most read French-language title with 1.2 million readers, followed by Coup de Pouce (1.1 million) and the bilingual title Touring (1.09 million).
