The Sunday Mail continues to rule the roost

Senior Reporter

THE Sunday Mail remains the country’s biggest weekly newspaper, according to the latest Zimbabwe All Media and Products Survey (ZAMPS).

The survey, conducted by the Zimbabwe Advertising Research Foundation (ZARF), found that the paper dominated hard copy sales among weekly papers, garnering 43 percent of the market share in the first half of 2021. For the same period, it enjoyed 41 percent of the online market.

The Sunday Mail’s continued dominance in these surveys is a testament of the standing that Zimpapers, which is the largest integrated media house in Zimbabwe, has in the media industry. Following The Sunday Mail is its Bulawayo-based sister paper, B-Metro, with 15 percent readership in both print and online.

In the daily newspapers cluster, The Herald remains the most read daily newspaper with 49 percent market share on print and 43 percent of readers who visited its online news platforms. The Chronicle came third with 28 percent of the daily hard copy newspaper readers, while commanding a quarter of the total online readers.

In the radio division, Star FM came fourth with 23 percent of the listeners while Manicaland’s Diamond FM followed at number six with 11 percent of the people surveyed saying they had listened to the station in the last four weeks. ZARF is an independent entity mandated to monitor and undertake independent market research on behalf of advertisers, the media industry, publishers, advertising agencies and public relations consultants in Zimbabwe.