The Sunday Mail maintains dominance as readership increases

Sunday Mail Reporter

THE Sunday Mail has maintained its dominance as the most widely read weekly newspaper in Zimbabwe, the latest Zimbabwe All Media Product Survey (ZAMPS) has revealed.

According to the 2022 second-half ZAMPS survey, The Sunday Mail has 49 percent of the country’s market share out of the 11 established weekly papers in the country.

Following The Sunday Mail in second place is its sister paper, The Manica Post, with 10 percent readership.

The Sunday Mail’s readership increased by 7 percent from 42 percent in the second half of 2021.

The survey showed that 13 percent of the adult population read weekly newspapers, while 23 percent consume daily newspapers. Also, the survey showed that most readers read The Sunday Mail’s local news (33 percent), followed by sport (19 percent), business (12 percent), entertainment (11 percent), classifieds (9 percent), regional news (3 percent), editorial (2 percent) and international news (1 percent).

At least 73 percent of The Sunday Mail’s audience prefer the physical copy, while 17 percent read it online and 9 percent get the paper’s news through WhatsApp.

On online platforms, the most sought-after content in The Sunday Mail is sport at 25 percent, while local news has 21 percent, followed by entertainment (18 percent), business and classifieds (15 and 9 percent, respectively), regional news (7 percent) and headlines (5 percent).

ZAMPS is conducted by the Zimbabwe Advertising Research Foundation (ZARF), whose mandate includes commissioning research on behalf of advertisers, the media, publishers, advertising agencies and public relations consultancies.

ZARF’s surveys have been going on since 1997.