THE strong growth in print advertising saw it claw back to take market share away from television for the first year since television's 1978 launch.

Print advertising has consistently lost market share to television. But last year the tide turned. According to the latest Adindex figures, media investment grew by 12.5% to R5.1-billion. In the previous year, however, there had been a 15.2% increase, indicating a slowdown in adspend growth.

But print, which is the largest media investment category, showed a 17% increase to R2.4-billion. Its share of the total increased to 45.6% from 43.8%.

Dick Reed, managing director of the Media Shop, says that Afrikaans weekend newspapers grew by as much as 40% "as a clear result of advertisers seeking to maintain coverage of Afrikaans speakers who were offended and alienated by the downgrading of Afrikaans programming on the new SABC TV channels".

Adspend on freesheet newspapers was up 26.5% and consumer magazines 21.5%. English dailies were up 15.7%, English weekend newspapers were up 17.7% and financial journals 19.4%. Afrikaans consumer magazines and black/coloured and Asian magazines grew by only 8.7% and 4.6% respectively.

Television's growth of only 7.2% to R1.9-billion saw its share of total adspend drop to 37.8% from 39.6%. The figures help to explain why the SABC is under so much pressure.

M-Net achieved 18.2% against growth of just 2.2% by the three SABC TV channels. "This is a major reason for SABC requiring government funding to cover an operating deficit in the current budget year," says Reed.

Investment in radio was up 14.7%, with its share marginally improving to 12.8%. East Coast Radio, Radio Lotus Stereo and 5FM showed good growth. But SAFM lost 21.1% and Radio Sonder Grense lost 10.3%. Reed says these figures continue "the slide of the national "cultural" English and Afrikaans services since their relaunches by the SABC.

There was a sharp rise in media investment in cinema, bringing its share up to just under 1% of total media investment.

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