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Show Weekly Newspaper Readership Extremely High Report Released From BYU Shows W eekly newspapers are extremely well read, Professor Weldon J. Taylor, head of the Department of Marketing at Brigham Young University, reported to members of the Utah State Press Association at their annual convention in Salt Lake City January 17. Professor Taylor analyzed for the publishers pub-lishers the first of a series of releases on readership and market studies conducted by the Marketing and Journalism departments depart-ments of the university in November 1947. The completed study, released in printed form at the convention is based on the Springville Herald. The study analyzed 13 one of three similar sim-ilar surveys which have been conducted in Springville, and American Fork, in Utah county, and Heber City in Wasatch county. In addition to the readership studies, there are also market surveys and economic econo-mic 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 Brigham Young University . under the sponsorship of the Utah State Press Association. Thi3 is the first of several planned releases re-leases of the project mentioned. Subsequent Subse-quent releases will be announced within the next few weeks. - The Springville Herald, subject of the survey,, is a weekly newspaper published in Springville. The issue surveyed con-, tained six editorial departments, ninety-two ninety-two general news stories, eighteen editorial editor-ial illustrations, thirty-three general dis-play dis-play advertisements, and approximately three columns of classified advertising. One hundred and fifty-seven persons were interviewed on 'Monday, November 17, four days after the publication date. One hundred and forty-nine, or 95, said they had read the issue being surveyed. Of the 157 persons interviewed, 60 or 92 of the males and 89 or 97 of the of the females said they had read the November No-vember 13 issue. These totaled 149 persons per-sons or 95 of those interviewed. The other 5 said they had not yet had time to read the issue surveyed. All readership scores of the measured issue are based on the responses of the 149 readers found in the total sample. Subscriber families in the sample had an average of 2.93 members twelve years of age and older, of whom 1.45 were males and 1.48 were females. Both the editorial and the advertising advertis-ing material were well read in the Springville Spring-ville Herald survey issue. All of both the men and women who read the paper read some of the local news and also some of the advertising. On the whole, the women read a greater percentage of both tne editorial matter and the advertising than did the men. The new3 item attracting the greatest attention of both the men and the women was one reporting the burial services for a local merchant, showing a readership score of 90 for the men and 93 for the women. The picture of this same merchant was the greatest attraction in the paper, showing a 100 score for both men and women. Page, one containing local lo-cal news was the best read page, showing 100 of both sexes reading something on this page. The November 13th issue contained ninety-two news stories, six ediorial de-, de-, partments and eighteen editorial illustra-. illustra-. tions. Women read the news content more thoroughly than the men, since they read an average of fifty-five of the ninety-two articles or 59, while the men read only forty or 43 of the articles. A very high readership was discovered in the case of editorial pictures, with the best showing made by a single column front page photograph of a local business man under the caption "Merchant passes" showing 100 readership of both the men and women. A four column picture of the "Train of Tomorrow" ran a close second with all the women observing it and all but one of, the men. Men and women agreed on the third choice also, a picture titled "Where Problems Prob-lems Were Solved." It was a picture of an old-timearbershop townspeople in the characteristic garb of a half-century ago. All of the women observed ob-served this picture and 93 of the men. Among those on which the men and women wo-men disagreed as to the best observed 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 reading read-ing of editorial items with 50 of the men reading one or more editorials as compared compar-ed to 43 of the women, although 76 of the women read some item on the editorial edit-orial page as compared to 65 of the men. Every person interviewed reported having hav-ing looked at and remembering at least one advertisement in the Springville Herald Her-ald which was used a3 the subject of the readership study. The issue contained thirty-three display, dis-play, twenty-four local and nine national advertisements. There were also about three columns of classified advertising in the issue surveyed. The large six-column national advertisement adver-tisement of the United States Steel Company Com-pany dominated page five, with a readership reader-ship showing of 73 of the men and 70 of the women reading some part of the ad. The best drawing news articles on this page interested 67 of the women and 60 of the men enough to read. The full page local advertisement of the Springville Spring-ville Appliance exceeded this showing, however, with 85 of the men and 90 of the women stating that they read all or part of it. Men exceeded the women's average by 6 in reading the National Advertising, Advertis-ing, while women read local, classified, and amusement advertising in a greater percentage of cases as measured by the margins of 8, 3 and 23 respectively. While a greater percentage of men read at least one national advertisement than women, 88 of the men as compared to 82 of the women, those women who read at least one, read more than the men did, since the women read an average of 3V4 ads each, or an average of 36, while the men read slightly less than three ads each, or an average of 32. Women led in every department of readership read-ership of the local advertisdng. Of the twenty-four local display advertisements appearing, the women averaged about 10 y or about 44, while the men averaged averag-ed about 7tt or 31. In the case of the best read advertisement, Springville Appliance's Ap-pliance's ad, they led the. men 90 to . 85 although both show it as the number one advertisement. This rating undoubtedly undoubted-ly 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, Jeweler, although 58 of the women read - the Safeway ad as compared to the 48 shown by the men. Rivoli Theatre and Penney's also show as leaders on the best read rating for both men and women. The size equalizing index which rates the ads according to "Reading per line per 100,000 readers", as used by the Advertising Ad-vertising Research Foundation in similar surveys, is also used in the Springville survey. This index , gives some means of measuring the attention getting power of different 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 and fifty-five. This advertisement ranked second on the men's list with a two hundred ninety-eight index rating. Women lead in reading the classified advertising by a score of 3, since 80 of the women read one or more classified ads as compared to 77 of the men. There are five departments in the reg-ular reg-ular classified ad headings, of these the women read an average of 3 or 69, Hi 9 t me5,.ad Blighty more than 3 x 1 addltln to the regular classi-fied classi-fied ads there were approximately two columns of Business Directory notices on which the men showed 37 readership and the women 45. Many statistics and illustrations exceedingly ex-ceedingly nteresting to readers and advertisers ad-vertisers alike are to ba found in the print u ZP m f 6 SPrinv"e survey, which is available in your Iron County Record office. Interested readers are invited to call and inspect this survey |