ABC: National newspapers remain resilient through festive period

In contrast to their online counterparts, national newspapers performed reasonably well in the run-up to, and during, the festive period, with little change across all three markets.

Daily market

A relatively uneventful December saw daily titles break even compared with the previous month, with no increases or decreases more than 2% either way.

Quality paper the Financial Times recorded the biggest increase of all the titles, up 1.7% over the period to add an extra 3,600 copies to its circulation, followed by the Daily Mail in the mid-market (up 0.7%) and the Sun over in the popular market (also up 0.7%).

The greatest decline in circulation belonged to the Independent’s sister title i, which dropped a little over 5,500 copies after a -2% dip in circulation. The Daily Mirror was the next worst-off after a small -1.7% decline.

Overall the market was neither up nor down compared with November, and down just -4.5% year on year, with a combined circulation of 6.82 million.

London Free Press

City A.M. continued to perform badly in the free press, down -5.2% period on period and -13.4% year on year; however, the market still saw yearly circulation up 4.1% – thanks to a solid performance from the Evening Standard (up 9.2% year on year).

With no monthly circulation figures available for the Standard, and a -0.1% period decline from Metro, the free market was down a small -0.3% compared with November, totalling 1.76 million copies.

Sunday market

As a result of some steeper declines in the quality market, Sunday titles performed slightly worse than their daily counterparts, down -1.4% overall compared with the previous month to flog a little under 6.3 million copies between them.

Independent on Sunday recorded the biggest circulation decline of all Sunday titles, down -5%, followed by the Sunday Telegraph (-3.2%) and the Observer (-3%).

Amid a sea of small – moderate declines, Richard Desmond’s Daily Star Sunday, which recently slashed its cover price, was the only title to see its circulation increase, up 2.7% to add an extra 7,900 copies.

No titles recorded any yearly increases, with the heaviest declines coming from the popular market – led by Sunday People, down -17.1% year on year.

Overall the market was down -6.1% year on year.