Thursday is best for free daily readership

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on November 30, 2007 at 11:21 PM

Swedish researchers for Sifo Research International have mapped out changing readership patterns of both paid and free dailies in Sweden on each day of the week, concluding that Thursday is the best day for free dailies, while paid morning subscription papers show almost no readership variation on different weekdays. Sunday readership for those papers, however, tends to increase, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

Peter Callius and Anders Lithner detailed their findings in their paper Daily Reach and Beyond, which was presented at the Readership Symposium in Vienna last month.

Evening papers, the research found, see low readership on Monday and Tuesday and high readership on Saturday and Sunday. Free dailies start out slow on Monday, grow a little between Tuesday and Thursday, and drop sharply on Friday.

The best option for free dailies seems to be more advertising on Thursday, and cutting down distribution on Fridays, according to Newspaper Innovation.

The paper can be downloaded here.