Glossy Talk: Famous surpasses NW in readership

Glossip Talk: Famous surpasses NW in readership for the first time

"Mean Girls: Khloe takes a stand against Kim's attention-seeking antics"; "She's got big Louboutins to fill!"; "Miley's new man is Amy's ex"... So read the celebrity scandal headlines inside of this week's Famous, any of them a fitting analogy for the five-year rivalry between the magazine and its ACP counterpart NW, which just got very interesting.

Pacific Magazines' Famous has surpassed its main weekly competitor in the Roy Morgan Readership Survey for the first time since its launch in 2006. Recording the highest readership growth for any women's weekly in the year to December 2010, Famous has passed NW by 24,000 readers, representing an 11.1% increase over the year. Famous now claims 330,000 readers to NW's 306,000.

However, Famous – which currently retails at $3.95, but sold for $3.50 for the most part of 2010 – still lags NW ($4.95 a copy) by 26,000+ sales each week. What does this mean? More ladies and gents are sharing their copy of Famous around the office and under school desks – Famous' new readers are NW's ex.

Depending on the demographic profile of said readers, and variables including competitive page rates and cross-title key account package deals, this could mean more advertisers will pay to display their products within Famous' pages. Cue ACP standing to attention to steal away from Pacific's attention-stealing antics. It will certainly be an interesting year!

Famous' stablemate Who also recorded a year-on-year readership increase, rising 1.6% to an average of 629,000 sets of eyes each week. ACP's OK! was the only other weekly celebrity magazine to record an increase, gaining 12,000 extra readers over the year to give it a weekly readership of 400,000.

The nation's most-read weekly magazine, ACP's Woman's Day, has just under two million weekly readers to its Pacific Magazines rival New Idea, which lost a 10% chunk of its readership in 2010 (giving it 1.44 million). Grazia maintained stable readership numbers over the year despite its flailing sales.

ROY MORGAN DECEMBER 2010 READERSHIP SURVEY 

- WEEKLY MAGAZINE RESULTS

Girl With a Satchel