Show buwei lions giuli weeklies wac well ell keas a weekly newspapers are ex well read professor wel don J taylor head of the depart ment of marketing at brigham young university reported to mem mern bers of the utah state press As at their annual conven tion in aa salt lake city january professor taylor analyzed for the publishers the first of a series of releases on readership and market studies conducted by the market ing and journalism departments in november 1947 the completed study released in printed form at the convention is based on the Spring springville ville utah herald professor taylor first gave the publishers detailed information on the methods employed in testing the readership of the papers and then turned to a detailed analysis of the completed release covering the Spring springville ville herald the study analyzed is one of three similar surveys which have been conducted in Spring springville ville and american fork in utah county and heber city in wasatch county utah in add tion to the readership stu dies there are also market sur veys and economic data studies concerning the two above named counties in the state of utah which are a part of the same project the project has been conducted by the marketing department of the school of commerce at brig ham young university under the I 1 sponsorship of the utah state press association the alpha kappa national commerce fraternity on the brig ham young university campus as burned the responsibility of tabu lating the papers used as ques tionna ires into the final master copy and assisted in processing the data for presentation this is the first of several plan ned releases of the project men tinned subsequent releases will be announced within the next few weeks the springville Spring ville herald subject of the survey is a weekly news paper published in springville Spring ville utah each page is seven columns wide and has lines to the column making 1984 lines to the page the issue surveyed contained six editorial departments ninety two general news stories eighteen edi tonal illustrations thirty three gen I 1 eral display advertisements and approximately three columns of classified advertising according to audit bureau of circulation report of september 1947 the circulation of the spring ville herald was 1074 practically all of the circulation of the paper is in Spring springville ville and mapleton with a few copies going to former resi dents and other parties interested outside of springville Spring ville one hundred and fifty seven per sons were interviewed on mon I 1 day november 17 four days after the publication date one hund red and forty nine or 95 percent said aid they had read the issue being surveyed of the persons interviewed 60 or 92 percent of the males and 89 or 97 percent of the females said sa 1 d th they had read the november 13 issue issay these total persons or 95 percent of this interviewed the other 5 percent said they had not yet had time to read the issue surveyed all readership scores of I 1 the measured issue are based on the response of the readers found in the total sample i subscriber families in the sample had ad an n average of bemb members ars elye and older of twelve years ears of age whom were males ar and ld were females an interesting example of the greater longevity of women is not ed in a breakdown of age brackets of these readers eighteen percent of the men fell in the bracket from 12 to 17 years but only 14 percent the brocket from 18 16 of the women 22 percent of to zu 29 years contained the men and 17 percent of the wo men the 30 to 44 year ye tr bracket con tamed 28 percent of 0 the men and 29 percent of the women while in the bracket 45 and overe there were only 32 percent of the men and 40 percent of the women both the editorial and the ad ver vertis mg mate material mal were well read in the Spring springville ville herald survey issue all of both the men and wo men who read the paper read some of the local news and also some on the whole advertising of the the women read a greater percent the editorial matter of both age the did and the advertising advertis in g than men attracting the the news item attention of both the men greatest and the women was one reporting burial services for a local loc al mer the score showing a readership chant and 93 the men for of 90 percent percent for the women the picture merchant was the of this same attraction in the paper greatest percent score for showing a one and women won ien page men both best was the local news containing percent showing read page something of both sexes reading on this page women read the news content more thoroughly than the men since they read an average of fifty five of the ninety two articles or I 1 59 percent while the men read only forty or 43 percent of the ar tides A very high readership was dis covered in the case of editorial pic tures with the best showing made by a single column front page pho of a local business man under the caption merchant pas ses showing percent reader ship for both men and women A four column picture ol 01 the train of tomorrow ran a close second with all the women observe ing it and all but one of the men men and women agreed on the third choice also a picture titled where problems were solved it was a picture of a old time barber shop front with five local towns people in the characteristic garb of a half century ago all of the women observed this picture and 93 percent of the men among hose those on which the men and wo men ds disagreed agreed as to the best ob s served six was a sports photo favored by the men and one from the society page which attracted the women the men outscored the women in the reading of editorial items with 50 percent of the men read mg ing one or more editorials as corn com pared to 43 percent of the women although 76 percent of the women read some item on the editorial page as compared to 65 percent of the men every person interviewed re ported having joked at and rebern bering at least one advertisement in the Spring springville ville herald which was used as the subject of the readership study the issue contained thirty three display twenty four local and nine national advertisements advertise mets there wert also about three columns tot bf classi fied advertising in the issue sur keyed the large six si x column advertise ament ment of the united state steel company dominated page five I 1 with a readership showing of 73 percent of the men and 70 percent of the women reading some part of the ad the best drawing news article on this page interested 67 percent of the women and 60 percent of the men enough to read the full page local advertisement of the appliance ex ceedee this showing however with 85 percent of the men and 90 per cent of the women stating they had read all or part of it men exceeded the women s average by 6 percent in reading the national advertising while women fread read local classified and amuse ment advertising in a greater gr eater per of cases as measured by the margins of 8 percent 3 percent and 23 percent respectively athu while a greater percentage of men read at least one national ad verti than women 88 percent of the men as compared to 82 percent of the women those wo men who read at least one read more tha than n the men did sine the w women omen read an average 0 of f 3 ads each or an a e of 36 per percent ent while the mc men read slightly less than three ads each or an average of 32 percent women led in every department of readership of the local adver of the twenty four local display advertisements appearing the women averaged about or about 44 percent while the men mell averaged about 7 or 31 pe cent in the case of the best read adaer ti Spring springville ville es u ad they led the men 90 percent to 85 percent although both show it is the number one advertise ment this rating undoubtedly is due in part to the fact that it is a full page showing men show safeway s advertisement as second in readership with a 48 rating while the women show it tied for fifth place with S virl jones jew eler although 58 percent of the women read the safeway ad as compared to the 48 percent shown by the men rivoli theatre and penneys also show as leaders on the best read rating for both men and women the size equalizing index which rates the ads according to read ing per line per readers as used by the advertising be re search foundation in similar sur veys is also used in the spring ville survey this index gives some means of measuring the attention getting power of diffene different ri t sizes of ads an advertisement by the snow white laundry leads the women s index rating and all ads with an index rating of six hundred fifty five this advertisement ranked second on the men s list with two hundred ninety eight index rating women lead in reading the clas sifted advertising by a score of 3 percent since 80 percent of the women read one or more class fied ads as compared to 77 percent of the men there are five departments in the regular classified ad headings of these the women read an aver age of 3 or 69 percent white while the men read slightly more than 3 or 62 percent in add addition tion to the regu lar classified ads there were ap proximately two columns of busl ness directory notices on which the men showed 37 percent and the women 45 percent many statistics and illustrations exceedingly interesting to readers and advertisers alike are to be found in the printed copy of the Spring springville ville survey which is avail able in your local newspaper office interested readers are invited to call and inspect this survey |