The lift seen last month, on the back of the Premier League, dissipated this month – which is a feature of the August/September dynamic. The tabloids lost to various degrees the Daily Star falling the most at 1,700 from their August figure.

The Times (the Ireland edition) is some respects still flatters to deceive. Their certified figure of over 10,000 is aided and abetted in this month’s cert by no fewer than 6,000 in multiple copy sales or bulks. This multiple copies policy started this year in June and has continued since. But this ‘sampling exercise’ looks like it’s paying off: their ABC cert for May ’17 was 2,500 whereas September shows that their paid for sales stand at just over 4,000 copies meaning that their paid for sales have almost doubled since the sampling began.

The Sunday market is static, bar the usual monthly decline.

Nothing gives a shot to the arm to a tabloid than the start of the Premier League. Historically the effects are short lived, but a welcome respite to publishers. August saw the beginning of the soccer season across the water and the tabloids got a collective lift of 4% on July but were still down 3% year on year. The Daily Star marginally saw the biggest lift close to a 2,400 increase. In comparison the Daily Mirror only saw an increase of 362 copies.

Turning to the Sunday papers: The Sun on Sunday had a good lift of nearly 2,500 copies. The Mail on Sunday increased by just over 2,000 as well in August. The Sunday Times increase by just over 600 on the previous month.

The market was up by over 11,000 on the month but nearly level year on year.

The “Reuters Institute Digital News Report” was released last week with some very interesting results. The report covers ore than forty different countries researching the extent of media usage in that country and, more specifically, digital usage when it comes to sources of news.

It’s a huge endeavour and the Institute very kindly gave me a copy of the raw data to fool around with. You can have a look at the broader results here. Below I’d looked at our own media and pulled out some data that I thought was of interest (each to their own!).

The report makes a distinction between “online” and “offline” sources – and in places where a brand has a foot in either camp, we can look at the brand's footprint.

In terms of the ‘traditionalists’, the graphic below shows the reach of the offline media using metrics of last week and the past three days. Based on the three-day metric, RTE Television news has a reach of 38% followed by RTE radio of 21%. Sky has a reasonable representation at 21% followed by BBC news. The first print medium to grace the chart is the Irish Independent at 14%.

The offline brands showed that the ‘digital first’ journal.ie is giving independent.ie a run for its money. The profile of the journal.ie was younger with (three days) 26% of its audience coming from the U35 age demographic compared to 19% for independent.ie – you could read into that surmising that the independent.ie audience is composed to some of its previous print readers and that the journal.ie is more a digital first audience (note: there’s a strict ban on the use of ‘millennial’ and other such hackneyed expressions in this meandering). RTE came in third at 19% followed by the Irish Times at 13%.

Looking at where we currently get our news, it really depended on your age. As a homogenous group of citizens, we get the main stay of our news from television at 22% followed by social media at 16%. However, if you are under thirty-five, then most frequently cited source was ‘social media’.

But even at that 35% of the population said that they ‘came across’ news on social media – the research didn’t say it was a deterministic process where they, say, went on to Facebook to seek out the news. The U35’s had a higher propensity to use social media and web site/apps showing a definite digital bias.

Just to add to that, a look at exactly how people came across news:

The long term model for subscription based media looks particularly grim. Only 9% of respondents in Ireland said that that had paid for content last year – that’s subscriptions or one off payments. Across the research of forty countries, that paid for news metric varies considerably. The highest was Turkey with 27% of the respondents claiming to have paid for news last year. The lowest was the UK at 6%. Ireland ranked thirty out of the forty-one countries with 13% being the half way point.

So, not only is the 9% a paltry uptake on subscriptions thus far, the future is bleak with only 11% with any inkling to go down the subscription route in the future. But, you’d have to suggest, that the publishers have painted a potential audience into this ‘non-subscription’ corner themselves. The uptake in some countries are high in comparison (Norway 26%, Brazil 22%, Sweden 20% for example) but there could be a huge number of variables behind those high uptakes – with no real direct comparison to Ireland.

When asked why they wouldn’t be prepared to ‘pay for news’ more than half the respondents said that they didn’t have to as publishers gave it away free. Coupled with that were 23% of the survey who said that their favorite medium didn’t currently charge for access.

Any now my Hooveresque attempt to weed out the ‘Reds under the Bed’. In the survey respondents we asked to place themselves on a political spectrum from left to right. The vast majority, 60%, planted themselves in the ‘centre’, 17% on the ‘left’ and 7% on the ‘right’.

So it’s interesting (if not just novel) to see the political leanings and choice of media. Looking at the online media, as the main source, it shows that the irishtimes.com and journal.ie have more of a leaning to the left than the other sites (top ten).

Turning to the ‘offline’ media, of those who watched CNN as one of their main choices of news, 23% said they were more on the left than right. The table is limited to the top ten media in terms of overall reach and then sorted. CNN is 10^th on the reach list. One that caught my attention was the Sunday Business Post. Although the numbers are small (possibly too small), some 43% of those who said that the SBP was one of their main sources of news chalked themselves up in the ‘left’ grouping.

The Island of Ireland report for the National newspapers ABC’s was released covering the period January to June 2017.

Looking at the overall picture, the market for National newspapers has fallen by 8.2% over the last twelve months.

Overview

That’s a decline of 94,000 copies over the same period last year.  There was a 7.6% decline for Sunday nationals or a reduction of 51,000 copies and an 8.9% decline for morning nationals equating to a 37,000 drop in their sales.

In the last five years, the market for Sunday newspapers has fallen by 32% or by more than 293,000 copies every Sunday. The morning market has fallen by 28% or 151,000 copies every day

Sunday

The Sunday market dropped 7.6% in the last twelve months to 621,000, a fall of 51,000 on the same period last year.

The biggest faller, in copy terms, in the Sunday market was the Sunday World falling 19,400 (-11.9%) on the previous year. This is followed by the Sunday Independent falling by 14,000 to 185,000 (-7.1%). They kept their bulk figure steady at around 12,000 copies; however, their drop in retail sales means that their actively purchased figure falls marginally. They had 2,000 subscribers to their digital offering in the first half  of 2017 (not included in the print figure).

The Sunday Business Post manages to hold the decline to 4% to leave them at 30,200. Within that figure is 1,800 of multiple copies. They also have a certificate for 1,100 digital subscriptions for the first six months.    

In the tabloid market, there were varying degrees of success/failure. The Sunday Mirror was one of the big fallers in the Sunday market down 14% year on year to 23,000. Its stablemate, The Sunday People, also fell dropping by 12% to 8,600.

The Daily Star Sunday actually managed to put on 300 copies year on year on the back of zero promotion for the title throughout the year.

The Sun on Sunday dropped 10% during the year to leave them at 52,000. However, their figure for the first half of 2016 got a serious lift from a half price promotion during the Euros so the first half 2017 figure was always going to look poor in comparison. 

The Mail on Sunday is down 10% to 75,144 which means that it falls behind the Sunday Times in terms of circulation for the first time in a few years. The Sunday Times are showing an increase of 3% year on year to 79,833.

However, that bountiful increase warrants more scrutiny - over the first six months of 2017, they have used their multiple copy sales facility which they didn’t in the first half of 2016 so it’s not really comparing like with like. Much of the increase in the 2017 figure can be attributed to the multiples as opposed to retail sales.

Morning

A big faller in the morning market was the Irish Times dropping 9,500 copies or 13%. This includes bulks to the tune of 12%. They do have 15,000 digital subscribers which is a very healthy increase on the 9,800 they had at the same period last year. There is most likely an element of cannibalisation in the print figure where some of the declines in print have probably been replaced by an uptake in digital.

The Irish Independent had an average sale of 94,500 down 8,000 or 7.8% on last year. They had around 18% bulks within that figure which is a marginal increase on last year. Digital subscribers were 1,900 for the first half of the year.

The Examiner fell by 8.5% to 28,300 with a multiple copies sale of only 2%.      

The morning tabloids showed a collective decline of 8% with The Daily Mirror taking the biggest hit down 11% to 34,000. The Star finished just on the right side of 50k and The Sun dropped 4,600 or 8% to 55,600 (The Sun also ran a half price offer during the Euros in the first half of 2016)

The Daily Mail fell 11% to 41,000 and The Times are showing a pretty impressive increase of 44% year on year. Again, like its sister Sunday, the use of multiple copies which were not used in the Jan June figure last year account for that dramatic swing.

The Herald was down 11.3% to 39,000.

In the overview, the figure for the morning market, in the copy and the chart, does not include The Herald. It’s included in the total market along with the Echo. The rationale is that there was also a comparison to 2012 in that section when The Herald was an evening newspaper. It would have completely thrown the figures had been included in one year and not in another.

In the morning section, the Herald is included and that’s why there’s a difference between the overall morning figure in the overview and morning sections.  

The ABC's for the monthly certificates came out today, as well as the Island of Ireland Report. Results are below.

Nothing out of the ordinary in any of the figures. The Daily Star Sunday had a good month adding 9% and the Mirror and People all showed increases.    

June ABC’s and this brings us to the half way mark for 2017. For the monthly publishers their Jan-June 2017 figure are available (to calculate) but the full Island of Ireland report is not out until 17^th of August. Some of the papers’ numbers look extreme (in percentage terms) but all have a logical explanation.

As a block the tabloids are down 13% year on year, the decline can be attributed to The Sun’s decline of 20% - however this time last year The Sun and its Sunday sister were in the middle of a price promotion on the back of the Euro’s. So that accounts for their above average decline in sales year on year. The other Tabloids would have also been boosted by the football in ’16 so we are not comparing like with like.

The Times had an increase of 7,200 on the month which we can attribute to two factors: firstly is an increase on ‘retail’ sales to over 4,000 (from around 2,500). However the majority were “Below Full Rate. Secondly there were over 5,000 “multiple copy sales” compared to none the previous month. So, the meteoric increase in sales is more down to a massaging of the numbers rather than a stampede to the retail outlets.

The Sunday numbers comparisons were similarly affected by the Euros in ’16 across the tabloids and above that, there is very little in out of the ordinary.

I mentioned before that when the monthly numbers are averaged to a six month figure and compared to the papers that only file a half year figure – the correlation between the two sets of data are very strong, its 0.97 which is close to a “perfect positive relationship”

Calculating to the six month figures for the titles here shows that compared to the first half of 2016, they are showing a combined decline of 7%.

It was therefore interesting to read in the trading statement from Independent News and Media yesterday their take on the circulation declines where they state “Whilst INM has market leading titles, circulation continues to decline at c7% year on year.”

May circulation figures throw up nothing out of the ordinary this month. In the morning the tabloids are down collectively nearly 7,000 with the Daily Star dropping 2,700 on the month and The Sun not far off that down 2,400. The morning market is down 8,000 driven mainly by the fall in tabloid sales.

Like the morning market, the Sunday market is continuing the downward trend. The Sunday Mirror and People added to their numbers, just shy of 1,000 in both cases. The big loser this month was The Sunday Times falling 2,500 on the month.

April newspaper circulation sees that the morning papers actually increased circulation month on month by just over 1,000. The tabloids held firm on March bar The Star who lost 600 copies. The Daily Mail added over 1,000 without tinkering too much with their bulk figure. The market was up 3% on the month and down 8% on the year.

In the Sundays the tabloids as a group were up around 600 copies with the Sunday People the only title showing a deficit. The Mail on Sunday was up over 6,000 copies with about 1,000 of that from bulks, the rest were retail sales. The Sunday Times had a bad month, even on the face of it. They are back 2,800 copies on the previous month and that after they increase their bulks by just short of 1,000 copies.

Sunday Market was up 1% and down 5% on the previous year.

It’s not really surprising that Cheltenham helped the tabloids as it does every year. Collectively they are up 4,600 on February with The Sun taking the lion's share of that adding 2,400 on the month. Outside that the Morning market was fairly quiet.

The Sunday market doesn’t get a lift from Cheltenham. Nevertheless, there were a few changes. Collectively the tabloids were down just shy of 2,000. The Mail on Sunday was down 1,200 and The Sunday Times added 2,000, with the majority of the increase occurring in retail sales. Overall the market was up 3000 on the previous month it’s still back 35,000 on the same time last year.

February ABC’s were released and it’s the usual swings and roundabouts. In the morning market, the Mirror and The Sun saw the biggest falls with the Daily Star managing to maintain roughly where it was last month. The Daily Mail’s decline can be partially attributed to a decline in bulks and to a lesser extend a decline in retail sales.

The Daily Star on Sunday defied all odds and managed a 1,300 increase in sales whilst the Sun on Sunday and The Sunday Mirror felt a drop of roughly 700 copies each.

The Sunday Times lost 1,500 over the counter as their bulks remains roughly the same as last month.

Morning Market down 9,000 on the month and 16,000 on the year while the Sunday market is down 11,000 on the month and 33,000 on the year.

Interesting developments in IN&M where they have decided to combine the newsrooms of The Herald and Sunday World into a seven day operation “with a focus on news investigations, top quality sports journalism and entertainment”.

This new setup will report to a “tabloid platform” editor who will be responsible for both the print and digital formats of both titles. The print and digital formats will retain their separate brand identities but their backroom operations will be merged and, interestingly, the titles are “likely to have its own editor under the new arrangement” – so no guarantees there.

There’s no mention of the Daily Star in this arrangement and a notable omission I believe. It’s not that long back where there were rumors of the Daily Star and Sunday World editorial being merged which on the face of it would seem a better fit.

The Daily Star’s position in the group seems to be very murky after the spat with Desmond over Royal nudity pics. IN&M still own 50% but, on the face of things, seems to have lost interest. IN&M received a dividend of €500,000 (excluding and charge they have for prepress, printing and what goes to Newspread in terms of distribution) last year from the operation but is it worth all that hassle for those numbers?

Whereas the other two titles are getting the full metal jacket in terms of digital support, the stepson (D.S) is nowhere to be seen with a non-existent digital presence at the moment.

Does all this add up to an Eirexit in the distant future for the Daily Star.

And finally…. The Irish times in reporting this went out of its way to dust off the certificate for The Herald so that it could inform the readers that its “circulation at the full cover price was 35,076 between July and December of last year “.

Naturally, the full cover price number is lower than the certificate number of 40,847 when bulks are taken into account.

I haven’t seen the Irish Times reporting their own “circulation at the full cover price” of 58,554 so far this year in their own publication!

Probably the bellwether statistic of recent times is the rate of decline in circulation year on year. The Island of Ireland Report July-Dec 2016 shows that in the latter half of 2016 the Sunday and morning markets have reversed any small gains they had made in the last few years.

You can clearly see from the graphic below that, whilst not setting the world alight, the most recent few reports show the market moving somewhat in the right direction and that the rate of decline was ‘improving’ or static at best. This report indicates that the market has fallen in 2016 and the rate of decline is back to where it was around 2012.

Morning

Significantly the market leader, the Irish Independent, dropped below the 100,000 level for the first time. Their circulation for the latter half of 2016 was 97,100, down 11,300 on the same period last year and a fall of 10.5%. This was even after their actively purchased moved from 84.4% to 82.7%, suggesting that they had a higher proportion of multiple copy sales in 2016 than the previous year but still didn’t keep them above the 100,000 watermark.

The Irish Times circulation came in at 66,200 a drop of 7,800 or 10.6% on the previous year. They will, in their analysis later today, be at pains to point out that their digital subscriptions are up from 7,500 to 13,100 which has to be applauded. But, when you gain 5,600 digital subscribers and lose 7,800 in print sales -  it’s not the idyllic scenario.  Likewise, the paper had its finger in the multiples pie, but it was an improvement on the previous year with their multiple purchased figure going from 13% to 11%.      

There’s something to be said about the number for the Irish Examiner. Admittedly they are back 7.8% but the paper still did better (not dropping as much!) in comparison to its nearest rivals. They have covered many of the recent controversies with great gusto and at this point, Michael Clifford is no stranger to the make-up departments of many of the Irish television stations. Rather than aping other online publications they have, in many instances, created the news – is this the panacea the market is looking for – a return to a bit of digging and delving?

Collectively the tabloids were down 5% rescued mainly by The Sun who managed a small increase in circulation of 700 copies (1.2%). This modest increase was in part due to a price promotion in July (and June, but that falls into a different report) when to paper was ‘half price’ or €0.50. In 2016 the title also flirted a little with multiple copy sales, a tool they had not used in previous years.
Relative to other publishers their use of multiples was very tame, at best adding just shy of 1,000 (2%) to their six-month figure. 

The Daily Star was down to 51,200, although their last monthly figure for December show them dropping below the fifty thousand mark to 49,200. It was an 8% decline on the last six months of 2015 but relative to 2012 when  they were dropping around 13% each report, it’s a bit of a respite.

The Daily Mirror fell 11% (-4,200) to 36,000. The Daily Mail comes in at 42,000, down 4,000 copies or 9% on the previous year. The rest of the papers are small in numbers and had a variety of outcomes. The FT improved on last year and The Times managed to add 6.1% on to its numbers.

Sunday

The Sunday market fell by 8.2% year on year or 57,000 copies. The leading publication, The Sunday Independent fell by 9.6% or 20,200 copies to 191,500. In that there are about 12,000 multiple copy sales which give them an actively purchased number of 93.7%.

The Sunday World had a bad six months and would have felt the Sun on Sunday price cut during the Euros. In May of 2016 they were selling 154,386 copies, June 150,554 and July 149,813 so a definite reaction to the €0.50 Sun on Sunday. Their circulation for the last six months was 149,600 down 14.5% or 25,400 on the previous year.

The Business post managed to beat the average declining only by 5.2%. Their circulation was 30,500 down 1,662 o the previous year with 95% of their circulation actively purchased.     

The collective circulation of the tabloids (inc Sunday World) is down 10% - but that’s a very deceptive figure. The Daily Star is up 20% on July-Dec 2015 mainly down to taking their eye of the Irish Market late in 2015. Late that year their figure dropped from about 15,000 to about 8,00 for October and December. There was no explanation for the drop and their resumed normal service in January 2016. This accounts for the 20% “increase” seen here.

Like its Daily sibling, the Sun on Sunday made good during the Euros with their half price promotion and added about 16% with the €0.50 price reduction (a price elasticity of -.219 for the very curious). Coupled with a few multiples not used before, their sale was up 400 copies on the comparable period in 2015.

The Mirror was down 16% or 4,500 copies on the previous year and The People dropped 1,300 to 9,400. The Mail on Sunday turned in a circulation of 79,500 down 5,600 on the previous year.

The Sunday Times, although down 1.5%, still managed a smaller fall than the market as a whole. Their gains were helped by News UK’s change of heart regarding multiples and the Sunday Times’ last few ABC certs for 2016 would have them on about 92% actively purchased which was not the case in 2015. As I’ve mentioned here on many occasions, there’s nothing wrong with multiples and they are a legitimate promotion tool in the eyes of the auditor, the ABC. But there no point in drawing a comparison when that comparison is skewed by a promotion.

As the Island of Ireland report hit the desk today I'm going to limit the analysis on the January monthly ABC's!  

A few notables are The Sunday Mirror and People did badly on the year on year. The Sunday Times is up 1%  as is The Sun

The final chapter on 2016 with the ABC's for December for a certain amount of papers – we have to wait until the 16^th of next month to see the tally for the other papers.

December is traditionally a slow month for papers and many of the days across the month are ‘excluded’ – an allowable feature where, due to circumstances like public holidays or a press failure you can remove those days from your average because of the poor sales.

No surprises this month: the tabloids saw small falls reducing their combined sale for the month by 1,700. The Daily Mail added 1,600 – half from retail sales and half from multiple copy sales.

The Sun on Sunday dropped back 1,600. The Mirror and People also fell, not in the same numbers. The People, with a figure of 8,670, looks like it will fall further in 2017 and you’d have to wonder at what point will it be jettisoned from the Irish Market. The Irish sale only represents 3% of the overall sale – is that enough to keep flogging a dead horse?

The Mail on Sunday, is ostensibly, up 5,600 - almost all of that lift courtesy of the wardrobe department.

Overall the market is down 1,000 on the month and 23,000 year on year.

Less than ten years ago the Irish Daily Star published their ABC cert for July December 2007. It turned in at 112,040 – a record high (or a new high at that point). The paper had been on a winning streak since 2001 when it first crossed the 100,000 threshold and stayed there until the last six months of 2009. November sees another benchmark for the title as it dips below 50,000 for the first time.

I’m trying to single the paper out for special attention or trying to ridicule their efforts. I was in the salt mines when the paper breached 100,000, so their fall below 50,000 somehow resonates with me.

Elsewhere in the morning market the Sun managed to drop 1,000 and The Mirror managed to how its own. The Irish Daily Mail fell 1000 and the morning were back 3,300 or 7% year on year.

Turning to the Sunday Market there was little to report: The Daily Star on Sunday fell 1,000 and the Sunday Sun lost just shy of the same figure. The Sunday Times, according to the numbers, added 3,500 month on month. Their ‘single copy sale’ figure, the one excluding the multiples, was up 2,800 the rest was down to multiples.

Sunday market down 5% year on year.

It’s a bit much in terms of data, but none the less very interesting given the happenings across the pond over the last twelve months. The UK NRS readership data was released this week giving a plethora of data across various media where publications are available.

It’s worth pointing out that the categories are not exclusive: print is not print only. A person answering that the saw a print edition of a paper may also have seen it via a PC or mobile/tablet. And the same applies across all categories.

I’ve concentrated on print but want to pause at the overall market briefly. Every month, the newsbrands under the microscope here reach 49m people across all media in the UK and this year, mirroring markets elsewhere, mobile is the dominant medium. More people use their mobiles/tablets to access newsbrands than print whereas last year the reverse was true showing a definite shift in tastes.

[tables don't really like the 'responsive web'! They refuse to conform - these tables just wont fit into a sensible screen size so you can download them here as a pdf]

Readership of newsbrands has risen whereas the readership of magazines has fallen marginally (there were fewer magazines surveyed in 2016 which might have a small influence on the overall figure in terms of robustness). Print readership and PC readership declined and mobile increased but in the case of the magazines not enough to cover the losses elsewhere.

A raging question (in my own head anyway): do magazines make the ‘whole’ transition to online. What people dismiss outwardly as dis-likeable in a print magazine may, in fact, be an integral part of the reading experience. The ‘intrusive’ advertising for example, which they pause and look at for example – is it actually intrusive or part of the experience? (at £28,000 for a run of paper FPA in Vogue UK – publishers pray you pause and have a look!).

The UK nationals had mixed fortunes. The Sun made the biggest strides adding 85% to its total footprint. But they did tear down the paywall in December 2015 and the survey relates to readership between October ’16 and September 16 and comscore data from September 2016. So the year on year comparisons is slightly skewed in its case.

It dropped 870k from its print readership figure but more than compensated through a 1.4m increase in their mobile readership and 987k in the PC figure.

However, many of the 870k that got out of the print reading habit would have been paying customers (and the same would be true of all print publications). So let’s hope that they can monetize the increased readership from PC/Mobile to the same value as the forgone circulation revenue (doubtful).

The Independent is the other big mover but that as well can be explained away. Over the survey period they ceased the printed product and moved completely to digital which accounts for the digital gains.

The brand with the biggest footprint is the Daily Mail reaching 29m people every month. This is followed by the Guardian at 26m and the Daily Mirror at 24m.

“Another Day, another drop”. ABC for October are out and the ever repetitive story of newspaper sales continues.

I’d reckon the market (as under the lamp here and not taking into account the laggards that have a bi-annual certificate) will be down 5% on the previous year, which bizarrely enough is an improvement on this time last year where the same papers were down in or around 8% at this point. So maybe the decline is slowing, but it’s still a decline and a five percent one!

In the morning all the tabloids took a hit and The Sun took a big one down 3,000 copies on the month. The Daily Star was down shy of 2,000 and the Mirror down 1,300. Combined with the others the morning was down 6,000 or 8% on the year.

The Sundays saw The Sunday Sun fall 2,600 on the previous month and the Mirror drop 1,400. The ‘winner’ this month was, ostensibly, the Sunday Times adding a hefty 4,000 onto its figure. However, once the tree is shook, 5,600 multiple copy sales fall out.

Again, it’s within the rules and nobody likes the ‘hurler on the ditch’ but, to note, it’s a big change on August and a complete change of direction on October 2015 where there were no multiples copy sales at all. News UK have this year dabbled in the multiples to varying degrees and although pulled back a little with the Sun(s) seem to be full steam ahead with the Sunday Times.

Below: a slightly different take on the past few years.

The September ABC figures today do little to stir the digits into tapping the keys. All very much as expected with some of the gains made in the July/August period slowly dwindling away this month.

The Sun fell back 1,500 but much of that was self-inflicted. At one point (May) they were running at near 2,000 copies per month in ‘bulks’ but this shrunk to 530 bulks for September and probably accounts for most of their fall.

The Star and The Mirror held on to what they had last month and overall the tabloids were back just over 1,000 copies.

In the Sunday market The Sun on Sunday showed some restraint and reduced its bulks to 600 copies accounting for all of its 1,000 drop. The Sunday Mirror dropped 3% on the month as did The People.

The Sunday Times added over 1,000 on the month (2%) and the rest of the gains on other publications were small. Sunday market down 17,000 on the year, morning back 22,000.

If there’s one thing we learn from the figures this month, it’s that there’s a particular fickleness to tabloid readers. I said in June that the Sun’s €.50 promotion could have cost the company in the region of €600k in foregone revenue for that month. And you’d expect some ROI on that, but the figure for this month is 1,700 above May and a lonely 34 copies above April.

The Star is on a downward trajectory (see graphic) coming in at 51,900, 600 down on the month. The Mirror manages to hang on to their previous months figure. The graphic also could indicate that the increase in The Sun’s circulation had a direct negative effect on the circulation of The Mirror – from which they have yet to recover. Overall the tabloids are back 6,000 on the month, 15,000 on the year.

Like the sister paper, The Sun on Sunday dropped back 3,200 now that the cover price has doubled from its promotional price. On the bright side The Sunday Times made a decent recovery adding 2,419 on the month.

Mornings down 21,000 and the Sundays down 36,000 on the year.

If you ever find yourself at soiree, you know the ones where the Ferrero Rocher are tumbling about with reckless abandonment and you are asked ‘how’s the newspaper business in Ireland’ the most succinct answer, where your inquisitor will need to ask little else, is: “Every week we sell 1.5m less newspapers that we did five years ago”.

The six month ABC’s were released today or the Island of Ireland Report as its otherwise known. The report shows that newspapers in Ireland are having a torrid time. The market, for National newspapers, is down 6.2% with the morning newspaper market down 5.6% and the Sunday market down 6.5%.

The graphic below shows the rate of decline over the past few years and although the decline is slowing or levelling off, it’s still declining at a rate -6.2% per annum which would question the long term viability of newspaper publishing.

*The Morning Market includes The Herald, the total market also includes the Echo. In the graphic above the total market figure includes the Herald and Echo, the morning market does not include the The Herald as it distorts the historical picture.    

The Sunday Independent dropped below two hundred thousand to land on 199,000 and even 12,000 bulks couldn’t save them. They lost 14,000 over the year or 6.7% slightly above the overall Sunday Market decline.

They further widened the gap between themselves and nearest rival, the Sunday World who had a bad first half dropping 15,000copies (unfortunate top spot accolade for that decline) over the year. It fell just shy of 9% of a decline but was eclipsed by the percentage falls of the Mirror and People.

The Sunday Business Post, although falling 1,134 copies, did do the “least worst” as it fell by 3.5%, the smallest fall in percentage terms in the Sunday Market. In that were 1,000 multiples but that’s a marginal reduction on the previous year.

The Sunday tabloids, in the main, stayed above the Sunday market fall percentage thanks mainly to the positive growth of the Sunday Sun. The Sunday Mirror and Sunday People way underperformed compared to the market and are currently falling at a double digit pace at 13% each. Those are aggressive levels of decline especially for The People who are currently at just under 10,000 copies each Sunday.

The Daily Star Sunday has all but given up on the Republic in terms of marketing, but still manages to find 15,000 customers to buy its product every Sunday.  

The Sunday Sun survived the drop felt by its direct competitors through a couple of factors I’d suggest. In June they ran a promotion halving the price of the publication to €0.50 throughout the month. The result was that it added just over 9,000 copies to their sales and 26% year on year for the month. So that one off promotion came just in time to be included in the six month figure.

We are also dealing here with oranges and clementines. In the first six months of 2015, the period we are comparing to, the Sunday Sun had no multiple copy sales whatsoever. There’s obviously been a policy change of late as the first six months of this year sees them carrying roughly 2,000 multiple copies every month.

Before this sounds overly critical the Sunday Sun it has to be said that even if you strip back the multiples month by month from this year and compare that figure to each of the first six months in 2015 they are still ahead every month this year – bar January. So, the core product is performing better than last year.

Price promotions and multiple sales are all above board and I’m just trying to temper the inevitable copy in Friday’s paper or a press release later today where they will beat their chests astride the Empire State building and berate the rest of the publications for not growing their sales – just like they did.

And they won’t be alone in trying to spin the numbers. You can nearly be guaranteed that currently in some newsroom there’s genesis of a story, in the face of nothing really positive to say, claiming increased market share for a publication. In a rapidly declining market increased market share is akin to being in a village beset with smallpox and finding a box of Aspirin.

The Sunday Times are showing a 7% decline year on year down 5,600 on the first six months of 2015. It’s below the Sunday market decline and, again, there may be a few factors here. I’d very much like to believe that that print media still works as a marketing medium, as does radio and television. The Sunday Times have used all of those mediums very heavily over the past year to try and coerce readers from the print to digital versions of their products.

They tempt the punters with iPad minis and reduced costs on the print version in order to try and get them to migrate online. You’d like to think that their huge marketing efforts are being rewarded and that people were taking to the digital platform on the back of those efforts.  

The Sunday Times has an ABC cert for their “Tablet Edition” from June of this year which shows ‘active views’ of 95,000 on average for the month. That would be a worldwide figure and it’s not further broken down unfortunately.

I believe that within that 95,000, a few of those have to be in Ireland and I would contend that within the 5,600 print editions drop is a measure of migration to the digital platform – the extent of which I cannot say and not revealed in the digital certificate. I did send an email to News UK asking them if they would like forward an estimate of their digital subscribers in R.o.I. but I’m still waiting for them to reply and forces me to ponder for a bit.

Looking at it from a different angle; if ten percent of the total Sunday Times print sale is from the Republic of Ireland could we apply the same ratios to the digital figure? Probably not as the digital market is probably wider geographically than the print and the UK is ahead of the curve digitally in comparison to the rest of Europe so 10% might be disproportionate for the Republic.

Then let’s chop it in half then to say 5% originate from these shores - resulting in potentially 4,700 subscribers? It’s impossible to ascertain but what we can say, with some level of certainty, is that the 6% print decline would be reduced, or at least explained in greater detail, if their numbers for their digital products were available on a geographic breakdown and we could see the migration numerically here in Ireland.

The Mail on Sunday, still #3 in the Sunday Market, is down 7,000 on the year but their circulation fluctuates wildly at the best of times on the back of promotions.

Sunday Sales

Morning Sales by title

The top selling paper in the morning market remains the Irish Independent selling 102,000 every day down 7,000 (6%) on the previous year. It has nearly 17,000 in multiple copy sales, up slightly from last year, with 83.5% of its circulation figure ‘actively purchased’. The certificate also shows that it has 1,602 ‘digital subscriptions’, so there is a measure of migration in their 7,000 reduction in sales over the year with at least some of that moving to the digital platform.

Its nearest rival is the Irish Times, in at 72,000, down 4,000 (5.5%) on the previous year. It too relies on the multiple copies to the tune of 10,000 every morning – up marginally on last year – and turns in an actively purchased figure of 86%. They also have a digital following, certified at 9,800 subscriptions every morning.

Interestingly their cert gives a small geographic breakdown showing that 734 subscriptions are “Overseas (outside the UK/RoI)”. I didn’t have a preconceived number for their overseas figure but, given the flight of people from the country on the last five years, I thought it would have been higher.

The Examiner stayed this side of thirty with a sale of 30,900. Just over 1,000 of that were multiples and they have an active purchase rate of 96%.

The tabloids had a mixed six months. The Daily Mirror, like its Sunday counterpart, is now in a double digit decline at 12% for the year. The Daily Star was marginally better and back 6% on the year – still above the market decline and The Sun managed a 5% increase in circulation very much with the same arguments I posited for the increase in its sister Sunday title. Between the swings and roundabouts the tabloids as a group showed a 4% decline over the year.

As a group the tabloids market share has declined over the past decade. Having once had a market share of 45% of the morning market it’s now back to a 33% share. In the same ten years they have halved the amount of newspapers they sold collectively. If the market is unkind to publishers, it’s particularly unkind to tabloid publishers.

The Daily Mail sold 46,000 ever morning down 3,000 or 6.7% on the previous year. The rest of the papers are small in sales and we won’t dwell on them.

The Herald, now on the morning menu came in a 44,000 down 8% and also used 1,500 in multiples.

Morning Sales

Morning Sales by title

Even if a few papers grace us with figures, the monthly figures still churn away. July ABC’s today and for many a tabloid it’s a drop from the previous month of European football.

The Tabloids are down nearly 4,000 but looking at The Sun it would seem that their pricing promotion pad off this month in recruiting some purchasers as their post promotion July is higher than their pre-promotion May figure by 7,000. The Mail is back 5,000 on the month but you couldn’t attribute that to European football.

The only notable in the Sunday market is the Sunday Sun down 6,000 on the price promotion but, like the daily, ahead on May before the promotion. The Mail on Sunday lost 5,000 on the month and the Sunday Times dropped again this time by 2,300.

The figures today bring us to the halfway point in the year. Like last month, there are a few numbers below the surface distorting reality – which I’ll endeavour to bring to the surface.

The most notable number is that of The Sun who had a sale of 69,000 for the month, an increase of 19% on the previous month. Initially, the paper declared it was going to run a €0.50 promotion throughout the Euro’s until the 10^th June, coinciding with the cup final.

However, they decided to stick with it for the whole of the month of July. A costly exercise for the month in terms of forgone revenue (which I’d estimate at €600k if they kept the retailer margin as it was in May), but paying dividends of a 19% increase in sales.

The Daily Mail’s figure shows an increase of 4% on the previous month, however, does not reveal the 18% bulks in that figure. In June, one in five of their sales fell into the ‘Multiple Copy Sales ‘ category, whereas in May the same category accounted for 9% of the total sale, that’s why the increase is a noteworthy observation.

The Daily Star increased is sale on the month and the Daily Mirror felt the wrath of The Sun promotion dropping 3,000 on the month or 8%.

In the Sunday Market the pricing was the main contributory factor to the gains and falls – amongst the tabloids at any rate. Like the daily, The Sun on Sunday continued the price promotion across the month and managed a 26% increase on the previous month to 66,700. The Mirror and People paid the price and dropped 18% and 14% respectively during the promotion.

The Mail on Sunday, like the daily, also availed of the ‘Multiple Copy Sales ‘ this month with 15% of the sale in that category, up from 3% the previous month.

The Sunday Times added 2,500 bringing them up to just shy of 76,000 and all the pricing and the smoke and mirrors availed of this month meant a 2% increase in the Sunday Market year on year. I reserve the applause.

Correction 27/07/16 amended Daily Star Figure.

May circulation figures arrived and the expression ‘swings and roundabouts’ has never been more appropriate. There seems to have been much movement in the figures and many of the stirrings are below the surface.

The Daily Mirror stayed stationary in comparison to April at 39,000. The Sun dropped back 1,700 on the month but is still marginally ahead of last year.  Overall the tabloids were ahead by close to 3,000 on the month.

In the Sunday market the big faller was the Sunday Times where it dropped 3,600 on the month to 73,419.

The promotion by The Sun offering the paper at looks like it’s showing up on the books in May where they had to declare how many sales are “Below Full Rate” or at the 50c rate for the duration of the Euros. Given that there was no other ‘below full rate’ promotion during May (that I know of) we can attribute all of those sales to the 50c promotion.

Its only began on the 28^th of May and therefore we only get two days of the promotion on the certs – a Saturday and a Sunday. The daily cert is detailed enough in its breakdown of sales showing M-F and Saturday sales and the Sunday cert is only that – so we can extrapolate the sales on the first two days of that promotion.

I estimate they had a sale of just shy of 102,000 (inc multiples) on the first Saturday of the promotion and 70,660 (if you include the multiples) on the first Sunday - both up on the same figures the previous month – but in the numbers you’d expect for a paper selling at half price?

Correction 27/07/16 amended Daily Star Figure.

It’s as good a time as any to examine the underlying conditions that account for newspaper sales in the ABC circulation figures and this month (May 2016) we have the whole spectrum of allowables in the various publications.

Below is a table the papers who have “sales” that fall into categories other than single copy retails sales – i.e. sales that are occurring outside your normal retail environment. These are perfectly legitimate and come with some strict caveats set out by the ABC.

Your normal Sale is “A copy sold to a retailer, on a sale or return basis, for resale as a single copy to a consumer”. Perfectly straightforward.

Subscriptions: “A single copy sold and distributed to an individual or organisation for a contracted period”. Again easily understood.

Multiple copies: Now this is where the ‘conspiracy theories’ about circulations numbers begin with comments like “sure, don’t they just give them away anyway”. Multiple copies are marshalled by the ABC to and a full account of them is given in the monthly ABC certificates.

The definition: “Copies purchased by a third party from the publisher, delivered and made available for pick up or receipt by consumers”. So, you’re in, say, a hotel and on the counter at reception is a bundle of Irish Independents which you’re allowed to pick up, compliments of the hotel, read and takeaway. There are a large body of rules governing this area which is really too much for this sitting.

In May 2016, the Irish Daily Mail was the biggest user of Multiple Copy sales at just over 4,000 copies for the month. In their certificate for the month it’s impossible to ascertain exactly where those 4,000 copies went because the multiple figure in the certificate is for all editions: RoI and UK and Ireland can’t be broken out. Below is a 'grab' from their May Certificate showing just what the 46,173 is made up of.

Below Full Rate is exactly that editions below the normal cover price. The Sun and Sunday Sun are €0.50 for the duration of Euro 2016 and they declared a ‘below full rate’ figure in their certificates this month as the promotion started at the end of May for two days where they were retailing at €0.50 and therefore were below full rate.

The table above only shows the papers that issue certificates monthly.

As of May 28 the Sun and Sunday Sun will be €0.50 – but just for the duration of the Euros – effectively all of June and about half of July.

Half their normal price in the republic (Normally €1.00) they have gone for a more complex pricing structure on Northern Ireland where the promotion is running as well.

It will be 25p Monday to Friday (from 50p), 35p on Saturday (again from 50p) and 50p on Sunday (from 70p).

It’s noteworthy in that it’s the first time in a while that pricing has been used as a stick to beat rival publishers and to lure in sales.

The ‘cost’, wherever it’s borne, will be significant. The revenue forsaken in a six week promotion of this type will top €1.2m at the till. How that’s split between the retailer and News Int. is anyone’s guess but it’s still a costly exercise.

If you saw last month’s figures you may have been lulled in a false scene of security by some of the numbers. But April is most definitely payback time. The Cheltenham pin-prickers and multiple tabloid purchases have all but disappeared and the tabloids took a knock for 4,400 copies collectively month on month.

The Daily Star took the brunt of that blow shedding 3,000 copies on the month, but, on a positive note, it’s ahead of where it was in February so perhaps the pages thrown at the festival yielded some dividends. Nothing really spectacular happened in the morning market outside that.

The Sundays don’t ‘do’ Cheltenham and therefore don’t suffer the same cyclical effect. On the surface there were some decent gains, notably with The Sun on Sunday showing a 7% gain month on month.

Other papers of note are the Trinity Mirror group of titles (Mirror and People) who, I think, are beginning to struggle in the Sunday market. The Sunday Mirror started the year at 29,200 and has dropped 3,300 in four months – a decline of 11%.

Only two papers in the market have shown double digit falls in the four months – The Sunday Mirror and Daily Mail. The latter’s figures swing wildly at times through high impact promotions, bulks or both and so that -11% deviation is somewhat accounted for in that.

And on bulks is worth taking stock of who is using that, very legitimate, facility:

Before we dive into the numerics we have to reacquaint ourselves with some of the social aspects of the month gone: St Patrick’s Day, All Ireland Club Finals, Cheltenham, Easter and the 1916 Commemorations and a shutdown of primary and secondary schools for nearly three weeks (which disrupts household patterns which might knock on to purchasing behavior).

The main competition this month is usually between the tabloids fighting for those horse racing punters looking for advice. The tabloids historically threw supplement after supplement at the market and new, albeit transient, buyers were recruited for the week and regular readers strayed and purchased other titles to supplement their normal read on the back of those extra pages.

You can see that this brief affair with the horse fraternity paid dividends with the tabloids adding 6,000 collectively or an increase of 4% on February. Taken another way, one that we all understand, that increase equates to just shy of €250,000 at the till, extra, for the month for the three papers collectively.

It looks as if The Star gained the most numerically – but on a year on year basis The Sun is the real winner up 6% on the year and breaking back into the 60‘s – which will drop back again in April I’d imagine. You can see from the graphic below that The Sun, of late, is having a bit of a resurgence and since December are bucking the trend in the market.

The Mirror didn’t really capitalise on the month only adding 900 to their numbers. You can see for the graphic that The Sun, of late, are having a bit of a resurgence.

The Sundays don’t see much from Cheltenham and never have so their figures normally remain unaffected by the festival and the only notables would be The People and the Sunday Times. The People, finally, after months of effort and a caviller attitude to marketing (aka no marketing effort), broke into four digits.

The Sunday Times lost 3,000 or 4% on the month possibly recruited by The Mail on Sunday who gained nearly as much on the month.

Up 6,500 on the month thanks to punters and down 21,800 on the year.

There’s a very interesting spat happening as I type. I hasten to add I type from the Republic of Ireland and on servers hosted in Ireland (it makes sense if you read on).

There is a current injunction against the Sun and Sunday Sun in England and Wales effectively gagging them from reporting that a celebrity husband was involved in a threesome. Fair enough some might say, I’ll stick to the old adage that “three’s a crowd” – but there you have it!

The basis of the injunction is that the story, if published, would damage the married couple’s kids should they learn all the details. A thin vial, I suggest, to protect the bairns from hearing that the “Aul Lad” was participating in a little bit of ‘olive oil wrestling’ – all very Greco/Roman.

But back to the media: The Irish Independent are reporting (at 12:45pm 14/04) that an ‘Irish Based Blogger’ has been threatened with legal action after he furnished details of the tryst on his site. The mystery blogger, they report, responded with a kind of “P.F.O.” maintaining that his site is hosted in the States and written here in the Republic – and therefore doesn’t fall under the gagging injunction.

The ‘mystery blogger' is Guido Fawkes and his article on the subject of this legal threat and further the details of that slippery tripartite agreement, should you wish to read it, is here.

Full marks to the Irish Times for stating this morning that the blogger was Guido Fawkes and that they didn’t feel they should add another layer of intrigue to the story unlike the Irish Independent.