The reader of The Bug, being the savvy media analyst he or she is, will recall the regular eruption of self-congratulatory trumpet-blowing engaged in by editors of News Crap Australia newspapers, or more correctly Newspapers, whenever they choose to spotlight their various readership, circulation, or subscription metrics.

Our Media Glass House researchers are also accustomed to that trumpet blowing being very long and very loud even when there is any rise in any of those metrics not matter how slim, or even microscopic which the various editors tell us means their particular hard-copy and online organ now has 17 billion readers or maybe more.

Of course such spruiking is aimed directly at advertisers who need convincing to part with their hard-earned to prop up a far right-wing media empire offering a literally dying audience a daily diet of far right-wing shit. (main picture)

But our researchers have detected an unusual and prolonged silence around many of the corridors of the Murdoch media empire following the release of latest data on subscription and readership.

The bald overall figures were reported in a matter-of-fact manner and unvarnished by in-house spin as part of required corporate results filings by News Crap. (below)

Rival media firm Nine Entertainment, through its Australian Financial Review, expanded on the statistics in a news story backed with information compiled by Roy Morgan Research.

As the AFR reported: “News Corporation’s four biggest Australian tabloids are shedding paying subscribers for the first time in a decade.”

Even that basic trend is, leaving aside the specific performance of Murdoch media outlets, is clearly bad news for News.

Our MGH teams wonder whether the latest figures suggest a fundamental and persistent, perhaps permanent, link between the quality of their coverage and the consumer behaviour that shapes their commercial metrics.

Or, as one MGH research put it far more simply: “If Rupert’s rags keep delivering shit content to readers, then you can’t blame readers for wiping their arses with them.”

The AFR story expanded on the stats, saying: “Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald Sun [lost] more than 400,000 readers, according to new filings from the news publishing giant.

“Subscription figures reported by the Murdoch family-controlled company show Brisbane’s The Courier Mail lost more than 8% of its paying audience, falling from 144,000 to 132,000 subscribers. “

The AFR continued by reporting that in the year to June 30, the Telegraph‘s subscriber base fell 7% to 141,000 and the Herald Sun‘s dropped 3.4% to 149,000. Adelaide’s The Advertiser fell 0.2% to 106,000, the AFR reported.

But, as the AFR noted: “News Corp’s national publication, The Australian, was the lone local bright spot, with the number of subscribers rising 1.8% to 342,000.”

And so it was that our MGH researchers found what they believe to be the only trumpet-blowing article across the Murdoch empire based on the latest figures.

The national broadshit The Australian told its reader that the latest stats showed its readership figures continue to “soar”, even though in its own previous reporting of others’ metrics, such as radio station ratings, The Oz itself is usually far more sober in its descriptions of any similar rise.

Not one to miss the chance to skewer a rival, The Oz’s own story included a line to tell readers that the readership of its “main competitor” the AFR “slumped by 5.1% year on year”.

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