Star claims "most widely read" label but print and online numbers merged

The Toronto Star says it has has held on to its position as the most widely read newspaper in Canada and the most-visited newspaper website in the Greater Toronto Area, quoting an industry study. The latest newspaper readership figures released Wednesday by the Newspaper Audience Databank Inc., known as NADbank, showed that the Star’s total print and online readership within the GTA was steady, with a total weekly readership of 2.3 million adults. A separate report released today by the Canadian Circulation Audit Bureau also indicates that the Star’s total circulation in the GTA remained stable in 2010 despite heavy pressure from growing digital media sources and a generally weak economy. In the NADbank 2010 survey, the weekday Star was read by an average of 948,100 adults a day in the GTA, a decline of 3.2 per cent from the previous survey. On Saturday, the Star reached 1.2 million readers and on Sunday 757,000 readers, down 3.4 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively, from 2009 data. By comparison, weekday readership in the GTA for the Globe and Mail was down 9.7 per cent and 7.5 per cent on Saturday. The Sun saw weekday readership jump by 33 per cent, following a 21.5 per cent plunge in 2009.