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Readers migrate between newspapers, online sources, NADbank study finds

TORONTO – At least three-quarters of the adults in major Canadian cities read either a printed or online edition of a daily newspaper each week, a readership study published Wednesday by NADbank Inc. suggests.

The industry-sponsored group looked at six local markets across the country with at least a million potential readers.

It found Vancouver was at the high end of the range, with 81 per cent of adults surveyed reading a newspaper’s online or print edition each week.

Toronto was at the low end of the range at 75 per cent of respondents reporting either online or print readership. Montreal and Calgary came in at 77 per cent, Edmonton at 76 per cent and Ottawa-Gatineau at 79 per cent.

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Toronto had by far the largest weekly online audience among respondents, with more than 1.2 million adults reading at least one of the six web editions covered by the study. Montreal was a distant second in the online category with 532,500 online readers weekly.

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In every city studied, the weekly print readership was several times higher than the online numbers – 3.2 million in Toronto, for instance, and 2.3 million in Montreal.

Online readership was highest in Ottawa-Gatineau at 27 per cent, followed by Toronto at 26 per cent and Calgary at 25 per cent.

“Readers continue to migrate between print and website editions over the week,” NADbank said.

The study was based on NADbank data collected in the fall of 2010 and spring of 2011.

NADbank is the principal research arm of the Canadian daily newspaper industry, with membership representation from newspapers, advertising agencies, media companies and advertisers.

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