The Spectator Australia's Circulation is Under 8,500 Copies per Week

Our own Australian edition of the highly partisan Tory weekly The Spectator often makes the news due to columns filled with unique hot-takes from editor and sky news host Rowan Dean (and friends). And like Sky News, The Spectator's controversial contents and political-class audience often results in its importance being heavily overstated in the media.

One may think that a national magazine frequently featuring the musings of politicians, bearing the standard of a near 200 year old publication of high repute, would do quite well in a mid-sized media market like Australia. One can also be very wrong.

Audited circulation figures for Australian magazines are impossible to find since most Australian publishers withdrew from official AMAA surveys two years ago, in favour of the slightly more opaque and flexible figure of 'average readership'.

However, The Spectator Australia is not published by an Australian company. It is published by the Press Holdings Media Group, a Barclay brothers firm which is incorporated on the notorious tax haven island of Jersey. Due to its main business operations occurring in the UK, the properties of Press Holdings is audited by ABC, a British auditing firm.

Through the ABC website we can see that the British edition of The Spectator maintains a healthy weekly circulation of  94,458 units. 

The Australian audition?

Less than 8,500 copies moved every week on average. That means that this national magazine that frequently obtains the contributions and attention of Federal politicians moves only about 1400 more copies a week than the local paper for Narrabri. 

With half of that figure coming from subscriptions, that means that only 4000 copies a week are being sold for the full cover price at the Newsagent. I am not privy to the finances of The Spectator Australia, but I do know that it doesn't often run full page advertisements. To rely on subscription and cover price revenue to run such an overhead-heavy business such as a weekly magazine? I know most of its content is syndicated from the British version - but I do not think this magazine is a profit-making venture. I would be love to be proven wrong! And I would love to know how much Tony Abbott charges for a column. (Another suspicion - maybe he provides them on mate's rates).

Read the ABC audit data here. 
https://www.abc.org.uk/product/16941-the-spectator-australia