The Press Market in South Africa

The end of apartheid 12 years ago has also had a big impact on the South African press market. While in the times of apartheid the newspaper market at the Cap was in the hands of four companies, the segment is now mainly dominated by two larger firms: one is the Independent Group of the Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly, responsible above all for the big English language dailies like The Star or Cape Argus. Its biggest competitor is the publishing house Naspers (Nasionale Pers/National Press), Africas largest media group. Naspers owns the mostly Cape Dutch language daily and weekly newspapers (Rapport, Beeld), a good number of magazines (Huisgenoot, FinWeek, Men’s Health), as well as the new and very successful tabloid Daily Sun. Together the two groups control around 70% of all daily papers in South Africa. With magazines the market share of Naspers is around 60%, followed by Caxton in the second place with about 20%. The rest is divided between Ramsey, Son & Parker, Johnnic and Associated Magazines. Even after the end of apartheid black owners continue to play a rather secondary role in the South African media industry. The largest group led by a black is Johnnic Communication (Johncom), which owns about 15% of all dailies and almost 20% of the weeklies, among them Sunday Times, the most profitable newspaper with the highest circulation in South Africa. Besides Johncom publishes, together with the British publisher Pearson, the business publications Business Day and Financial Mail. Also the left-liberal opinion forming weekly paper Mail & Guardian (M&G), which for the past decade has been closely cooperating with the BritishGuardian, using also its international articles, is owned by blacks. The magazine market in South Africa suffers from a very big choice. «There are simply too many titles for a small market» states the media expert John Farquhar. Also, the marketing budgets haven’t kept up with the many new niche titles. And finally, many advertisers prefer TV advertising as a means to get the mass market at lower rates. (Unlike in the west advertising agencies often don’t develop specific ads for niche markets, despite the different readership.) Another reason for the oversupply is that firms like the fashion chain Edcon send out free magazines to their customers, sometimes even with circulations of millions. An important factor for the difficult situation of the press industry lies in the diminuition of its traditional white readership. Especially well-educated white South Africans have increasingly been leaving the country over the last years. According to the latest statistics of the Institute of Race Relations the percentage of whites in comparison to the total population of close to 45 million lies with 4.4 million below 10%. At the same time the new black middle class is only slowly entering the market. «There isn’t any print product that has attracted black readers on a larger scale – with the exception of tabloids», says Farquhar. At present the wealthy blacks often invest their money in luxury goods. A further obstacle to the expansion of a reading culture is the fact that budgets for public libraries have been cut and prices for books are very high in com- parison to the purchase power of the people. This makes that at present many South Africans simply cannot afford to buy books.

The distribution market
The two major distribution companies NND 24 and Allied Publishing are controlled by the publishing houses Naspers and Independent Newspaper. Allied Publishing distributes its print products to the smaller shops at the street corner, and especially also to bigger chains such as CNA, Exclusive Books, 7/11, gas station shoops and the four main supermarket chains Pick’n Pay, Shoprite, Woolworths and Spar. A third larger distribution company is the Republican News Agency (RNA) run by Caxton, catering for more than 300 publishers with almost 1.300 titles with very different circulation numbers. Other smaller distributors who are active in the market are Magscene, JMD, Distrimags and NND. In order to gain more independence some publishers are considering the set-up of their own distribution system. At the moment, however, they strongly depend on the existing structures. Anton Harber, Professor for journalism and media studies at the University of Johannesburg, thinks that this dependence has been an important factor in the case of the quality paper This Day, founded in October 2003 by a Nigerian businessman, which disappeared from the market after only one year. In order to be able to act independently from the present distribution system, the Daily Sunset up its own network of roundsmen – mostly people living in the suburbs and townships of the target groups who know the habits of their customers. In the meantime the Daily Sunemploys more than 120 of these contractors, who in turn co-ordinate a network of 10 to 15 news- paper vendors each. As a rule, the publisher takes half of the single copy price. For magazines with less than 2000 copies (as is often the case for international publi- cations), different rates need to be negociated with the distribution company.

Distribution of international titles
After the years of isolation during the Apartheid, the interest for foreign news is relatively low in South Africa. Apart from a small internationally orientated elite, there prevails much navel-gazing. For many readers the point of reference is their own country. This is also visible with the South African state TV SABC, which at the moment doesn’t have a single permanent foreign correspondent. The market becomes financially interesting for a foreign daily when it sells a minimum of 500 copies per day – in South Africa only the locally printed Financial Times reaches this circulation.

Author: Wolfgang Drechsler