One paper managed to report a year on year gain – the “I” and that was eight copies other than that everyone else was in the red. Elsewhere there were some serious fallers. In the morning market The Daily Mirror lost 1,800 copies month on month. It can’t be put down to a post Cheltenham as the paper didn’t gain that much from Cheltenham in the first place and the April figure is below that
Today we’re looking at American Newspapers Circulation which were released in the last few days. It’s not a USA centric thing, it’s more that the print sectors march towards digital there is evolving faster (in my opinion) than many of the countries in the world. The Alliance for Audited Media (akin to the ABC here/UK) monitor a total of 593 newspapers across the States and they allow publishers to amalgamate both their paid copy sales
Before we get into each specific market it’s worth looking at the big picture. The market as a whole is down 6% with the morning and evenings falling by 7% in the year. The market has lost 100,000 copy sales in a short twelve month period and you can see from the graphics below that there seems to be no respite in this decline. Although the rate of decline has slowed it’s still a breakneck
The Sunday market, at 865,000, is down 6% on the same six months as last year, a drop of 55,000 copies in twelve months. The Sunday Market headline has to be dominated by the 14% decline in circulation of The Sunday World dropping 34,000 to 217,000. While there are, on the surface, grater declines for all the tabloids in the market, that can be easily explained away by the closing of the NoW and the
In the six months to December 2012, the morning market fell by 7% or 39,000 copies per day compared to the same six months in 2111. The biggest faller in percentage terms was the Daily Star dropping 13% or just over 10,000 copies. This is followed by The Sun, down 8% and the Irish Times back 8%. There doesn’t seem to have been any sleight of hand magic in the respective circulation departments as the
The decline in the number of Regional Papers being part of the ABC process is falling at a pace. Two years ago there were nearly 45 papers (paid for) certified by the ABC, now only 24 decide to confess annually or bi-annually. The only papers to record an increase are the Echo in Dublin and the Donegal News Monday edition. Monday edition.. most likely still living off the special edition the Monday after the All
If you wanted to actually see the definition of ‘being at odds with’ then you only have to look at the latest results from the JNRS and see how alien it is to monthly circulation data. Circulation numbers are easy to see in theses many and varied digital outpourings and they paint a fairly consistent monthly picture – a medium (printing on paper) in decline. If the circulation figures paints the reality of daily
Just because the month on month figures are devoid of their now customary minuses, it doesn’t mean things are getting better – is simply because January is being compared to a very slow December. You only have to glance at the Year on Year column to see the real picture. All the tabloids bounced back after the festivities and all kept their relative positions. The Daily Mail got a lift of close to 1,000 and
The results for the final month of 2012 are in and, surprisingly, no good news in that batch of figures. December is generally a slow month for newspaper sales and this year is fairly consistent with last year – back about 3% month on month. The Star took yet another step backward loosing 2,000 copies on the month falling to an historically low 66,000. Not to put too fine a point on it, but
You really wouldn’t have to be working on algorithms to predict what was going to happen this month. November normally brings with it a slight dip in newspaper purchases, but this year’s seems to have been fairly dramatic for some publications. The Tabloids dropped over 4,000 copies collectively with the Mirror (-1,800) and the Daily Star (-1,433) sharing most of that drop. The latter has now, for the first time in its fairly illustrious history,
What a difference a month can make and I’d particularly focus on the tabloid section of the Morning market in that statement. September was a good (enough) month for the tabloids especially as the hurlers took two bites of the apple. The Daily Star used those events to do a bit of price promotion and managed to maintain its numbers in September. However, October has been a disaster for the Red Tops: The Sun
You can’t escape the USA today – it being election day. So on the back of that I thought I’d have a quick look at the leading papers in the US and see how they are fairing against the previous year. They take a slightly different approach their ABC data as they combine the daily press circulation and the number of registered (ie access to restricted material) users. On the face of it, the press
I alluded to this on a couple of occasions before in this pixelated version of reality. Running two editions of a newspaper – one broadsheet and one compact, is a risk free but expensive decision. On one hand you let the market decide which format they prefer by giving them the choice of both formats and offending no-one. But in doing so you double up on your subbing (no a whold lot), layout, pre-press, plates,
Starting with the tabloids as it, historically, is a decent month for them. But not for all of them as The Sun took a hit of some 1,100 month on month. The Mirror was down 800 and the Daily Star just maintained the previous months figure. Perhaps this was due in part to the finals of the Football and Hurling and offering the supporters a promotion on their home turf. The Daily Star targeted the
Nothing beats a bit of decent competition. It ups the ante for all concerned. The salient part of the first sentence was the word “decent”. We’re not asking for strict Queensbury rules here, actually we’ve always advocated a more “Dan Donnelly” approach to the pugilist’s art. With obviously not enough on their plates (like declining sales, declining advertising revenue, no digit strategy to speak of etc) the papers in the People Republic have taken to
This month sees some actual month on month increases in newspaper sales. To highlight just how rare that is: in the last 20 months there have only been six months where a month on month increase in the overall market has been recorded and one of those months was the introduction of the Sun on Sunday. The tabloids did well this month recording a 4,000 increase on the previous month. August is normally a strong
The Morning tabloids showed a rise in circulation, mainly due to the strength of the Mirror, although The Sun and Star had small increases as well. Surprisingly, there was only one faller month on month – the Daily Mail. This is counter balanced by the fact that there were only two papers to show and increase year on year. The tabloids are down over 30,000 in the past twelve months and the total morning
Like the Sunday Market there is a headline figure in the morning market and it’s the Daily Star. It’s nearly out on its own with a double digit decline of 14% falling to 75,000 and down nearly 12,000 copies over the year (let’s spare ourselves all the analogies to the small lights in the sky). In market terms the tabloids have suffered the most at the hands of the recession down collectively 11% year on
Although the evening market is really just two local papers at different corners of the country – they still have to be covered. With the market as it is, the Evening Herald did well to more or less retain last year’s numbers. The introduction of the Dubliner magazine on Thursdays and the ability to grab headlines (Herald was all over Sky news today as it published pictures of Prince Harry in Vegas) seems to be
Outside the headline figure of a 31% drop for the Sun on Sunday compared to the News of the World, the big story would be the 14% drop in the circulation of the Sunday Business Post. In the last twelve months it lost nearly 7,000 copies and dropped to just above 41,000. Luckily for the spin in the sales department, there are 1,400 copies (3.5%) of ‘bulks’ in that figure – but they’re not alone
