THE EFFECTS OF TELEVISION ON THE READING AND THE BUYING OF NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES.

According to a 1958 report by the Central Office of Information, the British public buys more newspapers per person than does the public of any other country in the world. In that year the 16 million families in Great Britain bought over 16 million national morning newspapers, about 2½ million London evening papers, about 27 million national Sunday papers, as well as huge quantities of weekly and monthly publications and over 9 million provincial morning and evening newspapers. There was then, and there is now, an enormous circulation of newspapers and magazines. Even so, the circulation figures for the national publications have, for several years, declined, as of September 1, 1961. By newspaper standards that decline is serious. It is serious because it means much more than a loss in revenue from sales or a declining service to readers. It means a loss in advertising revenue at a time when production costs are extremely high. It is understandable that the press should look for a cause. One of the things that pressmen and others have seen is that this period of decline coincided with a period in which the proportion of homes with television sets in them was still rapidly growing. This comparison constitutes part of the case for a fairly widespread view that television is responsible for declining circulation figures. This case has the support of an appealing argument that if people are spending their time watching television they will have less time for reading papers and that if papers go unread for a long period they will cease to be bought. This is, in fact, a large part of the case for suggesting that television is responsible.