Every two years, The Advertiser gets the results of its comprehensive market survey, measuring reader satisfaction with our news content, Web site, custom publications, special sections and even advertisements.

Thanks to our loyal readers, the numbers once again were excellent. While readership is declining across the country, weekly readership is up at The Advertiser. Some 76 percent of those surveyed — representing 530,000 O'ahu adults — said they read the newspaper over the previous seven days, a 3 percent increase from 2006. About 69 percent said they read the paper during the previous Monday through Friday period and nearly half (49 percent or 344,000 readers) said they read the newspaper yesterday.

Saturday readership over the previous month was 58 percent and for the previous Saturday was 48 percent. Sunday readership was 72 percent over the previous four Sundays and 58 percent (or 409,266 readers) for the previous Sunday.

With our newspaper and Web site, we reach 52.1 percent of the O'ahu market on a typical weekday and 60.5 percent of the island on a typical Sunday.

All of our products — daily newspaper, Web site, weekly newspapers, specialized publications — reach 83 percent of the market each week and 88 percent of the market over a 30-day period which shows the tremendous reach of The Advertiser.

Section readership continues to be high on weekdays, including the front page and main news section (90 percent), the Hawai'i news section (83 percent), Island Life (79 percent), business news (64 percent) and sports section (59 percent).

On Sundays, the section readership is also very good, with the main news section leading the way (85 percent), followed by Island Life (81 percent), Hawai'i news (80 percent), sports (60 percent), the business section (59 percent), Dining Out guide (59 percent), the travel section (56 percent), Focus section (55 percent), TV Week (55 percent), the comics (48 percent), the real estate section (36 percent) and the employment ads (28 percent).

Reader satisfaction with news topics has increased over two years in almost every area that was measured, including education (up 16 points), good things happening in the community (up 14 points), growth and development (up 14 points) and business news (up 14 points). Other big gains were made in Hawai'i government and political news (up 12 points), local crime and court coverage (up 11 points) and local news (up 8 points).

Satisfaction scores also improved for places to go and things to do (up 7 points), the environment (up 20 points from four years ago), health news (26 points above our parent company Gannett's average) and national and world news (3 points above Gannett's average). The only area of coverage that dipped slightly was military coverage, down 5 points from 2004.

These are encouraging numbers attributable to the hard work of our entire staff and the generosity of our readers, who have given us good marks for several years. But we realize the 2,500 interviews, conducted by Scarborough Custom Research in May and June of this year, are solely the opinions of those interviewed and many of you who were not called may have additional thoughts for us.

Bring it on. Let us know what we're missing.

Mark Platte is senior vice president/editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at 525-8080.