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news

119,873 > 355,000?

By David Topping

nowveye.jpg
If you picked up a copy of this week’s Eye, you may have noticed that the text along the bottom of the cover claims that “It’s official! Eye Weekly has the largest circulation of any urban weekly in Canada!*” Yipee!
That asterisk leads to small text running up the side of the paper that reads “119,873 copies picked up each week. Verified Audit Circulation Interim Audit Report. April ’06 – Sept. ’06.” The point is driven home on page 22, which repeats the announcement in a half-page declaration with a few things added: the text “Thanks Toronto! The feeling is mutual…”, as well as the Print Measurement Bureau (or PMB)’s logo and a “Verified Audit Circulation” logo stamped below it.
There is, of course, one huge problem with Eye‘s assertion: NOW. On page 121 of this week’s issue, NOW also asserts their dominance as “Toronto’s #1 Weekly” in all caps, with the stats to back it up: “Every week, 355,000 people pick up NOW. That’s 130,000 more readers than NOW‘s nearest competitor.” In smaller text beside it, it reads “PMB 2007, NATIONAL 12+”
The PMB’s 2007 report (16 kb, .PDF file) is based on data for the period between October 2004 and September 2006, and seems to justify NOW‘s claims over Eye‘s. In a sample size of 24,000 readers, 355 people picked up NOW, while 225 picked up Eye (and, uh, 280 picked up Canadian Golf). So, unless NOW isn’t urban, isn’t weekly, or isn’t Canadian—or unless our math skills are pure garbage—Eye’s assertion that their dominance is “official” seems to be nothing but wishful thinking. Maybe one day, Eye.
Photo from LexNger in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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Comments

  • Bored

    Hope you get that NOW internship you want, Dave!

  • Joanne

    You missed the big detail, they’re two different measurements — Eye goes by how many actual copies are picked up, while Now measures by how many readers, not copies. Eye could do the same as Now if they wanted, but they publish different measurements.
    Enjoy that internship though, we’ll enjoy this slow news day.

  • Marc Lostracco

    Number of both NOWs and Eyes picked up by TTC cleaning crews at the end of the day: way too many.

  • David Topping

    Joanne, I don’t think so, unless NOW‘s using some clever wording: Eye says “119,873 copies picked up,” NOW says “Every week, 355,000 people pick up NOW.”
    I also don’t intern (or intend to intern) at NOW, and I prefer Eye anyway.

  • Joanne

    I think that’s it though — Now assumes one copy is picked up by a few people (I think the standard assumption is 3 readers per copy — could be wrong) and is measuring via all those people. Eye is stating how many hard-copies are actually picked up — and each is then read a few times.

  • http://www.jillmurray.com Jill Murray

    Circulation and readership are two different figures. The first involves the number printed and collected from boxes. The second is an estimate of how many people are reading the magazines, no matter where they found them.
    “Pick-up” is a term they’re both using to sound friendly about it, but it means absolutely nothing, and confuses the issue.
    So they can actually both be right on this one.
    But more importantly, no one ever had to pick up Torontoist off the floor of the subway…

  • Hamish Grant

    I think the major difference between NOW and eye is that NOW is a religious-hipster-socialist paper while eye is secular-urbanite-nerd paper. Both of them suck equally, however.

  • Joanne

    How, specifically, do they suck, Hamish?
    It’s like me saying “Hamish Grant sucks” — you’d probably want to know why, non? It’s easy to say what you said, harder to point out why.
    I don’t read Now because every article sounds like the same, as you say, like a socialist manifesto, or aging marxist rant. Angry about everything, even easter eggs as we have seen. Eye is a much more heterogeneous read.

  • Ali

    Joanne is correct: Now does theiur numbers on an estimation of how many are picked up (3 per copy is correct). While Eye gives the hard numbers based on pick-ups.
    Eye IS the most read weekly because it is distributed in the subway. That is the deal they sought so they could raise their ad rates.
    As for preference, I like Eye over NOW for the same reasons stated above — every article has a tinge of anger in it, if not outright hostility. The only good one there is Mike Smith who does City Hall stuff. The music section is good, but not nearly as connected and knowlegable as Eye.
    Its a shame that Eye doesn’t pull in as many ads as NOW so that it could compete with them on sheer editorial volume. At Least Eye had local cartoonists write/draw for them, while NOW stuck with Life in Hell for too long and now has nothing.
    I do lament the re-formatting Eye did which removed the columnists head shots. Now, each artilve looks the same and the columnists (experts, if you will) are treated the same as a CD of food review. When they did the redesign I thought they cut Gord Perks because his headshot was gone. Those kind of indicators are good for readers and should never be removed.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca Jonathan Goldsbie

    Eye’s circulation is 119 873. Its readership is 284 000.
    Now’s circulation is 110 456. Its readership is 355 000.
    Eye’s cover boasts “119 873 copies picked up each week”; that refers to the circulation. The ad on page 121 of Now boasts “Every week, 355,000 people pick up NOW”; that refers to the readership. The distinction is evidently one between “picking up” (taking) an issue from a box and “picking up” (holding) an issue in your hands to read it.
    In short: Because of the TTC deal, there are more copies of Eye than Now and therefore more are taken from the racks. But each issue of Now is read by more people than read each issue of Eye, although how they measure that is beyond me.

  • anna

    We’re lucky to have both.

  • Edward Keenan

    I work at Eye Weekly, so I’m not objective, so I’ll stick to explaining the difference rather than weighing in on who’s right and who’s wrong (we’re right, of course).
    There are two different organizations: Verified Audit measures copies picked up by monitoring the print run and distribution and counting the number of copies returned (or left over) at the end of every week. So they provide a “circulation” number that is audited. This is a measure of the number of copies actually picked up.
    PMB conducts surveys of random people on the street, showing them a publication’s logo and asking them if they have read that publication this week. This produces a “readership” number, which is unrelated to actual circulation.
    Both numbers are usefull in their own ways.
    That is, Jonathon and Ali (and Jill) are correct. Now’s print run is well under 130,000 — the number they’re using is the result of an opinion poll conducted using their logo — a sample equivalent to 355,000 members of the general population told survey-takers that they read Now. Eye Weekly’s claim is based on a count of how many copies were put on the street and how many were returned.
    I assume that when Now says 355,000 readers “picked up” Now, they mean picking it up to read it — and a lot of those people are picking up each other’s leftovers, presumably.

  • http://www.Torontopedia.TYO.ca/Eye_or_the_Now HiMY SYeD

    This is the eternal Wednesday at midnight, all day Thursday refrain heard across The Big Smoke,
    What do I read first, Eye or the Now?
    http://www.Torontopedia.TYO.ca/Eye_or_the_Now
    I would much prefer find Now’s Events Listings inside of the easier on the eyes Eye Weekly.

  • andrew

    what does it mean then that i usually grab two copies of each per week – one on my way in to work on thursday, which i usually forget at my cubicle, and then one on the way home? i read both, and it is only within the past year that nigh on 15 years of habit have changed that i’m reading eye first and now second [i stopped heading straight for the music reviews about ten years ago, and occasionally i dally with heading straight for savage love and love bites].