Let’s hear it for “total news”, the metric  being celebrated this week by Australia’s news brands, but which also includes commodities such as Apple and Google news.

After a false start last week, today’s embargoed figures from Roy Morgan Research covering all over-14s, shows readership rose 0.8 per cent last year to include 97 per cent of Australians.

The audience data is based on the last four weeks averaged over the 12 months to June 2022, with Total News defined as Australians aged 14+ reading news in print and/or news in digital. The definition of digital news includes Australian publishers’ news websites/apps, Apple news and non-Australian-owned news, as well as ABC news and Google news.

Industry group ThinkNewsBrands describes digital as “the growth engine for news and the preferred medium for most readers” at 19.6 million, almost two thirds of readers (12.6 million) engage with printed newspaper formats.

Nine Entertainment’s Sydney Morning Herald – with an audience of 8.4 million ­emerges as the country’s top news brand (print and digital), using the four-weekly average for the last 12 months.

Stablemate The Age (5.9 million), News Corp national daily The Australian (5.0 million), and the WAN package of the West Australian and PerthNow (at 4.7 million) join the Herald at the head of the list, ahead of News Corp’s metro daily brands and Nine’s business daily the Australian Financial Review.

The nine lower places belong to the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph (4.6 million), (Melbourne) Herald Sun (4.5 million), the Australian Financial Review (3.5 million), (Brisbane) Courier Mail (3.3 million), Adelaide Advertiser (1.7 million), and national independent weekly the Saturday Paper (1.0 million).

News readership – which rose 0.8 per cent to 20.5 million across both categories – gained 3.1 per cent for digital (to 19.5 million), while falling 11.8 per cent to 12.6 million for print.

The “total readership” demographics are: 14-24 (3.0 million) 91%; 25-34 (3.6 million) 96%; 35-49 (5.1 million) 98%; 50-64 (4.6 million) 98%; and 65+ (4.3 million) 97%.

Brand general manager Vanessa Lyons says in any given week, 18.9 million Australians read news to stay informed, entertained and aware. “According to Roy Morgan data, that is more than the number of Australians consuming milk, drinking coffee or logging into Facebook,” she added.

“It’s a phenomenal number and even more phenomenal that readership of Total News continues to grow. This is testament to the important role news brands play in the lives of Australians and it shows what an unbeatable package Total News is for advertisers looking to connect with audiences.”

Total News represents all news brands across print and digital as well as standalone news websites as one media channel.