With declining reach and influence, the Murdoch empire can no longer determine election results

Labor might not have noticed it yet, but Rupert Murdoch’s capacity to influence the outcome declines with each passing election. Over the past eight months, Victoria and Queensland have voted out first-term Liberal governments despite the best efforts of the Murdoch press in those states. Their slanted front pages, unfair coverage and combative editorials only highlighted their growing irrelevance to the electoral process.

The central reason for this decline in influence is the radically shrinking reach of News Ltd’s newspapers. Last year, the total circulation of all Australian daily newspapers was a little over 2.1 million, fully one million lower than it was at the turn of the century.

If we factor in the growth of the Australian population, the picture is even more dramatic. Not long after the second world war, in 1947, roughly two copies of a metropolitan daily newspaper were sold for every five people in Australia. By 2014, the figure was one for every fourteen people, reflecting a decline in penetration from 38.6 to 7.2 per cent. And the decline was accelerating: between 1996 and 2014, penetration halved from 14.1 to 7.2. Murdoch papers, with roughly a 60 per cent share of Australian daily circulation, are now bought by about 4 per cent of the Australian population.

Not only do newspapers have a shrinking readership, they also have an ageing readership…

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