Reader’s Digest has topped the readership ranking in the PMB 2006 study, released today, by a handy margin. The venerable pub scored 7,206,000 readers 12+, far outweighing Chatelaine, a distant second at 4,476,000 with Canadian Living in tight for third at 4,406,000. The field was spread more evenly with French-language magazines. Coup de Pouce was the frontrunner with the 12+ aud scoring 1,428,000. French-language Châtelaine came second with 1,292,000 readers, narrowly edging out Sélection du Reader’s Digest which scored 1,290,000.
The 2006 study included a record 114 magazines, a 33% increase since the last Through-the-Book study conducted by PMB in 2000. This year, 11 new titles have been added. Excluding the new titles, and based on a ‘like-with-like’ comparison, the overall readers-per-copy level was identical to PMB 2005 at 5.44. The average number of readers for the 85 magazines common to the two studies was constant at 1.2 million. The Recent Reading methodology has also been constant over the six years since its inception. The average across common publications in PMB 2006 (5.4) is virtually the same as PMB 2001, the first year of Recent Reading (5.5). A new element this year is a national segmentation of the Canadian population (‘Canada 39’) which combines existing PMB data on geography, ethnic background and language spoken to produce 39 distinct market segments from coast-to-coast. The study is based on 25,165 interviews conducted over 24 months from October 2003 to September 2005.
