National Press Market Round-Up – 1998
1998 brought a drop in both circulation and readership across the national press market. Total circulation dropped by 2.4% throughout last year, an actual fall of 677,824 sales. Currently the total circulation of all of the national press titles listed here is 27.28 million. The popular papers lost the greatest sales overall as a sector.
On the other hand, the quality papers were the most hard hit in terms of readership over the year. The whole of the national press market lost 4.5% of its total readership, and most of this was sustained by the quality dailies and Sundays. The quality Sundays lost 11.4% of their readership.
Throughout the year, The Mirror was the only national title to gain in readership, piling 263,000 more readers on, a proportional gain of 4.3%
Similar to last year therefore, the tabloid papers were hit hardest in terms of circulation. The quality and mid markets however, suffered more than the tabloids in terms of readership.
Quality Market Within this market sector, The Independent titles suffered the most. The Independent accounted for the largest proportional loss in circulation, with its sales dropping 14.6%, and its Sunday version shedding 9.5% of its circulation. The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph fared badly in terms of readership, although The Daily Telegraph lost the most readers this year round, dropping a total of 333,000.
The Independent and The Financial Times hold the smallest shares of readership for the national dailies, both holding 2% each. The Independent’s Sunday sister also holds the smallest share of readership of all the Sunday’s, currently claiming 2% of the readership share.
The Independent was sold by the Mirror Group to the Irish based Independent Newspaper group in March last year (see Newsline), and the title underwent a redesign in June (see Newsline). The daily version of the title hit its lowest circulation of the year in February, and the Sunday title suffered this in March and April. Despite both The Independent and The Independent On Sunday gaining in circulation towards the end of the year, both titles have seen a serious decline in sales over 1998.
Mid-Market The Express titles were hit hard within the mid-market sector, with both of them suffering substantial losses in readership and circulation. The Express On Sunday, which recently announced that it was going to revert back to its original identity of The Sunday Express (see Newsline) lost the greatest number of sales. The Mail On Sunday bid farewell to the largest amount of its readership however, losing 214,000 readers by the end of 1998.
Popular Market Large proportional losses were sustained by quite a few tabloid titles throughout 1998, but The Sunday People was hit hardest within the sector. The paper lost a massive 547,000 readers, and dropped 190,588 of its sales.
The News Of The World remains the most popular national title, with an average circulation of 4.3 million from January to December 1998, and a readership of over 11 million.