The fall edition of the biannual Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) magazine survey was released today and indicates that readership levels are dropping slightly for the country’s biggest magazines.

The average readership across all magazines was 1.02 million readers, down from 1.04 million in the spring. The readers per copy remained nearly identical, dropping from 5 readers per copy in the spring to 4.9 readers in today’s release.

Readership figures (12+) placed Reader’s Digest at the top with 5.97 million, down from 6.36 million in the spring. Canadian Living retained its second-place spot with 3.976 million but dropped slightly from 3.979 million, and Chatelaine was bumped out of the top three by What’s Cooking, which had 3.53 million, down from 3.54 million. Chatelaine lost 139,000 readers, dropping from 3.56 million to 3.42 million.

In Quebec, Touring had the highest circulation with 741,000 copies, up from 721,000 in the spring. Qu’est-ce qui mijote was second with 527,000, down from 544,000, followed by Primeurs with 372,000, down from 374,000.

The readership numbers at the top three publications dropped since the spring report. Qu-est-ce qui mijote was at the top with 1.298 million, down from 1.372 million. Second was Coup de pouce with 1.225 million, a drop of 4,000, and third was Touring with 1.109 million, which also dropped by 4,000.

The readers per copy had the Canadian Medical Association’s Canadian Health on top with 32, followed by Time’s People at 20.6 and Transcon’s The Hockey News with 19.8. In Quebec, Dernière Heure had 16.3 readers per copy, Renovation Bricolage had 14.3, and Le Lundi had 14.2. Those numbers represent a decrease for all six publications.

The study covered 115 magazines with a sample of approximately 24,000 Canadians.

Read the report here

Related stories: PMB 2010 Spring survey shows reader stability;MiC‘s three-part series ‘The future of magazines’