Total figures on daily newspaper circulation in Germany further confirm a decrease in copies printed, with 13.5 million recorded in 2019. For comparison, ten years earlier almost 20 million copies were printed, which also already followed annual drops in numbers. Even the Sunday edition of Germany's best-known tabloid, Bild am Sonntag, was struggling with paid circulation in recent years. Meanwhile, monthly unique user numbers on the Bild website, though fluctuating, recorded periodical growth during 2019-2020, especially during March 2020. The latter may be attributable to the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic in Germany, with readers spending longer periods of time at home or even being quarantined. In fact, not only the Bild online version, but Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), all national daily newspapers, were among the leading news websites in Germany, also in March 2020. Digital newspapers had the highest reach among the 30-49 age group.
The Bild national daily edition recorded the biggest reach by far among German readers, followed by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the FAZ. Around half of the German population still reads newspapers in their free time several times weekly, though these numbers have also been decreasing in the last four years. An increasing number of consumers read newspapers several times a month. In 2018, almost 28.4 million people in Germany lived in a household with a daily newspaper subscription.
