NRS national newspaper round-up: April 2012 – March 2013

The latest figures from NRS for the period April 2012 – March 2013 show that the national newspaper market experienced, with only two exceptions, further year on year declines.

The ‘i’ and the Financial Times were the only papers to see any growth, up 3.2% and 3.7%, respectively.

Daily Market

The biggest decrease was seen by the Independent, down -16.9%, shedding 90,000 readers, whilst sister paper, ‘i,’ saw moderate growth of 3.2%, gaining 18,000 new readers.

In the mid-market, both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express were down. The Daily Mail lost -4.1% of its total readership from the last period, but it was the Daily Express that really felt the strain, declining by -12.9% and losing 172,000 readers.

The popular titles all experienced losses, with the Daily Record sitting at the bottom of the table and down -11%. The Sun, whose online platform this week announced plans to place content behind a paywall in an effort to boost revenues, was down -8.5% losing a substantial 624,000 readers.

The Daily Mirror was down -10.6% and the Daily Star -9.2%, losing 340,000 and 97,000 readers, respectively.

Sunday Market

In the quality market, both the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph were holding their ground, with only slight losses of 0.7% and 0.9% respectively.

The Observer, however, took a sharp -14.1% dip, losing 158,000 readers over the yearly period. The Independent on Sunday saw an increase, the only paper in the quality market to do so, of 3.9%, bagging an extra 20,000 readers.

In the mid-market, neither the Mail on Sunday nor the Sunday Express increased their readership figures, with the Sunday Express taking a significant loss of -19.2% in comparison to the -3.1% readership decline experienced by the Mail on Sunday.

The Sun (Sunday) has no comparable percentage data but was still riding high with over 5.8 million readers, although this is down on the previous NRS update.

The Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and the Daily Star Sunday all took significant losses, down -25.8%, -32% and -20.2%, respectively.

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