February 2012 Newspaper Circulations

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The big story this month is what can only be described as The Sun’s (Sunday) maiden voyage.  And the launch fanfare was so great that it managed encouraged a euro out of a 109,000 punters pockets in its first week. Naturally there’s bound to be an element of ‘curtain twitching’ in the figure and next month will be a much better indication of its sale.

The comparison is going to be drawn and it’s that the Sun Sunday (SS) is still 8,600 behind where the NoW was in February 2011. Interestingly, the other papers that muscled in on the NoW readers when it closed manage to hang on to the vast majority of their hostages when the SoS appeared last month. Across the pond is another story: In May 2011 the NoW was selling 2.4m copies every Sunday. The Sun (Sunday) sold 3.06m copies nearly 700k more. Again, wait ‘till the dust settles and see where that stabilises   

The biggest faller, the Sunday Mirror, was the biggest gainer after the closure. It fell back 4,300 copies this month and the Sunday People dropped 1,400. The Mail on Sunday fell over 6,000 and I’d be weary of attributing that drop completely to the introduction of the SS and likewise the fall in the Sunday Times (-5,300).

The Sunday market managed a month on month rise, but is still down 24,000 on the previous year.

In the Morning market the Sun slipped another 1,700 and is dangerously close to falling into the 60’s.  The Mirror fell 1,300 and other than that all the papers managed to be roughly in the same position as last month.

Year on year its down 28,000 with the tabloids accounting for over 80% of that fall.

Title Jan-12 Feb-12 Feb-11 M/M Y/Y
Daily Mirror  59,470 58,114 62,103 1,356 -3,989
Daily Record 551 632 723 81 -91
Irish Daily Star 76,560 76,514 88,036 -46 -11,522
The Sun 73,283 71,576 79,831 -1,707 -8,255
Daily Express 2,831 2,825 2,762 -6 63
Irish Daily Mail 49,274 49,502 53,089 228 -3,587
The Daily Telegraph 2,932 2,815 2,765 -117 50
Financial Times 3,231 3,369 3,687 138 -318
The Guardian 3,562 3,277 3,616 -285 -339
i 479 467 -479 -467
The Independent 838 813 910 -25 -97
The Times 2,108 2,085 2,180 -23 -95
Morning Market 275,119 271,522 300,169 -3,597 -28,647
Daily Star – Sunday 35,353 34,386 31,318 -967 3,068
NoW/The Sun (Sunday) 109,450 118,060
Sunday Mail 1,162 1,360 1,587 198 -227
Sunday Mirror 61,365 57,012 40,786 -4,353 16,226
The People 26,104 24,803 18,436 -1,301 6,367
Sunday Express 3,842 3,643 3,507 -199 136
Sunday Post 823 724 764 -99 -40
The Mail on Sunday 115,186 109,042 116,133 -6,144 -7,091
Independent on Sunday 1,298 1,331 1,320 33 11
The Observer 7,034 6,551 7,223 -483 -672
The Sunday Telegraph 2,778 2,879 2,591 101 288
The Sunday Times 114,614 108,599 113,992 -6,015 -5,393
Sunday  Market 369,559 459,780 455,717 90,221 4,063
Racing Post 5,411 5,374 5,786 -37 -412
Total Market 650,089 736,676 761,672 86,587 -24,996