Although most have invested in an online presence, the market has not matured to the point where online advertising sales can sustain the business. In this climate, circulation numbers have become even more important than before as rival publications vie for dwindling print readers.
In October, the Audit Bureau of Circulation of South Africa (ABC) released a statement saying that it was revising the circulation figures of the Sunday Times, due to an irregularity in the classification of certain circulated copies of the paper.
The ABC reported that certain figures reported as business subscription copies were, in fact, voucher copies and were thus ineligible to be counted in the official circulation figures.
"The circulation certificates of the Sunday Times will be adjusted for the previous 12 months i.e. from Quarter 2 (July to September) 2014, and revised circulation figures issued. The exact number of copies to be excluded from circulation has yet to be precisely determined, but is in the region of 12,500 copies," the bureau said in a statement.
According to the ABC figures for the third quarter of 2015, Sunday Times was the biggest-circulating per-issue newspaper in the country at 338,532 copies per week.
In response to the ABC finding, the Times Media Group said that - while there was no debate - the copies in question had been distributed and received by the intended recipients.
"It is important to note that the copies are not being questioned as to their actual delivery or use, but on the basis of a contract that was not directly aligned with ABC rules," the TMG statement said.
The differences between the different types of subscriptions that are included in a circulation are crucial because they inform advertisers of the real interest in the publication, according to Paul Peters, managing director of print media distribution company Allied Publishing. He said that the real indicator of a newspaper's circulation health was single-copy sales, followed by individual subscriptions, then travel and commercial subscriptions, and finally business subscriptions.
"Advertisers are interested in sales where the intended buyer is a known human being. This is why travel and commercial subscriptions count more than business subscriptions. They're intended for a known reader, whether it is someone on a company's loyalty program or even passengers on a flight," said Peters, who is also a board member of the ABC.
"Newspapers rely on all sorts of bulk deals and prize offers to get readers. Single-copy sales are the best."
Peters highlighted football newspaper Soccer Laduma as an example of clean, straight sales. The paper relies purely on single-copy sales, and is the second-most circulated paper after Sunday Times, with 328,336 circulated copies every week in July to September 2015.
Soccer Laduma CEO Peter du Toit said that the paper's distribution model was motivated by a desire to refuse to do it any other way other than the best. He said: "This approach is applied by some of the most successful football figures such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola, and we're making it work for us. We decided that we only wanted clean circulation, and it's worked. Every single copy of Soccer Laduma circulated means that someone went out and bought it. We're very proud of that."
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