Irish Newspaper Circulations January 2011

The first month of the year and we see a little mistake on a other than unblemished tome.

The people at the Mail, who “passed off” as another paper last weekend have no ABC certificate this month. The ABC’s extremely efficient PR agency in Blighty said:

The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday circulation data for January 2011 has not been submitted in time for inclusion in this report. Once the data has been received the report will be updated and re-issued.

Perhaps that’s why also last week they had a particularly gushing piece on page 2 of the pass-off about how fantastic their figures were for January and how they where the only paper growing in this market etc etc etc. Anyway did all the self congratulation made them take their eye off the balls and forget about the business? To quote a particularly apt line from Quentin Crisp:

“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us”

Anyway…

There was no point in doing a comparison to December and last month and the one previous are particularly strange and its best not to draw too much of a comparison. Year on Year yields some interesting facts.

The demise of the Daily Star on Sunday would have been greatly spurred on by the first (and last) weeks sale at just shy of 36,000. This is down 21,000 from it’s figure twelve months previous.  

It’s daily paper, the Irish Daily Star is down 4,600 as is its rival The sun. Meanwhile The Mirror gained just shy of 5,000 copies over the year.

The Sunday Times can’t seem to shake off the low 100’s and actually only once since May 2010 did they peek over the 110,000 wall. The News of the World still isn’t seeing returns on its investment and heavy marketing spend wit a figure of 122,000.

We’ll wait until the Mail grace us with a certificate (if they are not too busy passing off as other titles this Sunday). In the meantime is a sobering fact that Leaving aside the Mail figures – the combined total of all the papers is down 96,000 year on year and, more frighteningly it’s down 146,000 on 2008.