The Morning Market is down 7% or 47,000 copies.
The Daily Mail is the biggest sufferer down nearly 10,000 copies to 49,000 which is 17% over the 12 months under scrutiny. Given the spend on advertising/promotions for the Daily that has to be a bit of an eye opener in Ballsbridge.
The Irish Times took a hit of 7% and 8,500 copies. Like the Mail this has to alert the powers that be (in waiting at this point) in Tara St. Geographically they lost 10,000 copies in the Republic but luckily managed to gain in the North and ‘Other’ (UK and Europe) to get a net effect of –8,500. You can go back to 1990 and you wont find a year on year decrease of that magnitude. Mirroring somewhat the path of the Sunday Business Post, their second last month on month large decrease was in 2002, again in our last recession.
Not wanting to be upstaged, it’s morning rival also made a bit of history too dipping into the par 150,000 region for the first time – not even the near 14% bulks in the figures could keep them over 150k mark. In order to be directly comparative: the Irish Independent lost the 4,000 in the Republic managing to keep their sales in the North and further afield.
Next is The Sun which is down 8,000 copies. Their body blow came late in the year when they were de-listed by the paper friendly bunch at Dunnes. The purchases forgone at supermarket chain we lost forever with Dunnes shoppers either substituting (not too much it would seem) or forgoing the purchase altogether.
The rival tabloid the Daily Star dipped below the 100,000 mark and lost 7,300 copies in the period.
Its been a bad year for the mornings dropping 7%.
Whatever one can speculate about ‘recovery’ and other positive sentiments, the morning newspaper market will never recover. It may, just may, manage to slow its decline, but it will never regain those sales.
| Publication | July Dec 2008 | July Dec 2009 | Diff ‘000 | Diff % |
| Irish Independent | 154,610 | 149,906 | -4,704 | -3% |
| Irish Times | 115,462 | 106,926 | -8,536 | -7% |
| Examiner | 52,544 | 49,096 | -3,448 | -7% |
| Irish Daily Star | 105,031 | 97,647 | -7,384 | -7% |
| Daily Mirror | 64,427 | 62,974 | -1,453 | -2% |
| The Sun | 99,646 | 91,453 | -8,194 | -8% |
| Daily Express | 3,361 | 3,371 | 10 | 0% |
| Daily Telegraph | 3,479 | 3,013 | -466 | -13% |
| Financial Times | 4,768 | 3,756 | -1,012 | -21% |
| Guardian | 4,744 | 4,176 | -568 | -12% |
| The Independent | 2,201 | 1,279 | -922 | -42% |
| The Times | 3,439 | 2,762 | -677 | -20% |
| Daily Mail | 58,988 | 49,052 | -9,936 | -17% |
| Total | 672,700 | 625,410 | -47,290 | -7% |
