Area readers prefer The Red Oak Express
Fri, 12/05/2008 - 12:00am
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The Red Oak Express hit one of its highest notes in years last week.
With our combined election, Halloween and Stanton football coverage, as well as the advance on the upcoming Veterans Day observances, the newspaper sold more copies off the rack than it has in years.
Rack after rack, store after store, our sales were fast and furious.
To us, that wasn’t a surprise.
We provided most of our readers with what they were looking for — a local take on the historic election.
That’s something we’ve been doing all year.
Take the month of September for example, we sold nearly double the number of newspapers off the stand than we did in 2007.
And over the course of 2008, we’ve had some outstanding issues, many of which outsold editions we’ve published over the last 10 years.
But we’re not just selling newspapers off the rack.
The Red Oak Express is delivered to far more households in Montgomery County than any other publication.
Each year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) releases circulation statistics for newspapers throughout the country.
Well, this year’s numbers are in and The Red Oak Express is by far the preferred publication in the county.
According to the audit, at least every other household in the county has a subscription to The Express.
Statistically speaking, we are delivered to 52 percent of homes in Montgomery County.
In comparison, our closest competitor — The Omaha World-Herald — reaches only 22.6 percent of county homes, less than half the readership of The Express.
I should point out that the World-Herald’s readership does increase on Sundays to about 29.6 percent.
Here are some of the other highlights of the audit:
• 23.3 percent of homes, or less than one in four, receive AARP magazine.
• 13.5 percent have subscriptions to Reader’s Digest.
• 8.4 percent to Better Homes and Gardens.
• 6.6 percent to Good Housekeeping.
Skipping down the list a bit, some other popular national publications just making the cut in Montgomery County are:
• Oprah — 1.1 percent.
• Parenting — 1.2 percent.
• Glamour — 1.4 percent.
• Maxim — 1.6 percent of homes have a subscription.
• People and Time — 1.7 percent each.
• Sports Illustrated — 2.3 percent.
• National Geographic — 3.3 percent.
Just because we are the most-read publication in the county, doesn’t mean we take our readers for granted.
In fact, we are gearing up to redesign the newspaper.
We’ll be working with a small panel of readers and advertisers to eliminate some items and add others.
We’ll be working to maximize our news space to get you more of the stories and features you want to read.
To get us started, we have included a survey with our subscription renewals over the last six weeks.
At last count, 255 subscribers completed surveys.
I’ll share the results of that survey in another column.
In the meantime, thanks for making The Express the No. 1 publication in the county.
Roger Harnack is general manager and editor of The Red Oak Express E-mail him at
editor@redoakexpress. com.