NRS National Newspaper Round-Up – August 2003
The latest NRS figures for national newspaper readership revealed no reprieve for the Financial Times, which continued to suffer during the six months to August 2003, despite a £2 million advertising campaign to promote its recent redesign.
The title saw readership shrink by 18.3% year on year to 463,000 as it remained at forefront of the deep recession in the corporate and financial sectors. However, Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of the paper’s parent group, Pearson, recently announced: “Our business newspapers, with lower costs and improved content, will bounce back strongly when business advertising recovers.”
The Observer, which recently boosted its magazine offering with the launch of a new monthly music publication, was also hit during the six months to August 2003 with readership declining by 10.7% year on year. The Guardian fared slightly better and suffered a slight 1.9% decline during the same period to 1,288,000.
The Independent, which recently launched a tabloid-sized edition for commuters in the London metropolitan area, saw its readership hold firm at 569,000. However, the Independent On Sunday stole the march in the quality sector with an impressive 14% year on year increase to 709,000.
Elsewhere, fortunes failed to improve for Daily Mirror, which suffered a 12.6% decline in readership during the six months to August. The title recently unveiled two new Saturday supplements and demonstrated a return to good old-fashioned tabloid-style headlines.
The Mirror‘s Sunday sibling also had a less than impressive period in the six months to August, with readership slipping by 10.9% year on year to 4,819,000, down from 5,409,000 in the same period the previous year.
News International’s Sun failed to shine with a 7.3% year on year decline to 8,858,000 and News Of The World saw its readership fall by 2.5% during the same period to just below 9.5 million.
Meanwhile, Richard Desmond’s Sunday Express put in a strong performance in the mid market with readership increasing by 9.7% year on year to 2,321,000. The Mail On Sunday also had a positive period in the six months to August with a 1.2% improvement to 5,954,000.
| National Newspaper NRS Figures – August 2003 | ||||
| Title | Mar-Aug 02 | Mar-Aug 03 | Actual Change | % Change |
| Daily Express | 2,182,000 | 2,052,000 | -130,000 | -6.0 |
| Daily Mail | 5,933,000 | 5,873,000 | -60,000 | -1.0 |
| Daily Mirror | 5,429,000 | 4,745,000 | -684,000 | -12.6 |
| Daily Record | 1,607,000 | 1,407,000 | -200,000 | -12.4 |
| Daily Star | 1,736,000 | 1,786,000 | 50,000 | 2.9 |
| Daily Star Sunday | n/a | 1,050,000 | n/a | n/a |
| Daily Telegraph | 2,336,000 | 2,213,000 | -123,000 | -5.3 |
| Financial Times | 567,000 | 463,000 | -104,000 | -18.3 |
| Guardian | 1,313,000 | 1,288,000 | -25,000 | -1.9 |
| Independent | 569,000 | 569,000 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Independent On Sunday | 622,000 | 709,000 | 87,000 | 14.0 |
| Mail On Sunday | 5,881,000 | 5,954,000 | 73,000 | 1.2 |
| News Of The World | 9,703,000 | 9,457,000 | -246,000 | -2.5 |
| Observer | 1,264,000 | 1,129,000 | -135,000 | -10.7 |
| People | 3,034,000 | 2,423,000 | -611,000 | -20.1 |
| Sun | 9,553,000 | 8,858,000 | -695,000 | -7.3 |
| Sunday Express | 2,115,000 | 2,321,000 | 206,000 | 9.7 |
| Sunday Mirror | 5,409,000 | 4,819,000 | -590,000 | -10.9 |
| Sunday Telegraph | 2,053,000 | 1,984,000 | -69,000 | -3.4 |
| Sunday Times | 3,413,000 | 3,310,000 | -103,000 | -3.0 |
| Times | 1,712,000 | 1,770,000 | 58,000 | 3.4 |
| Total | 66,431,000 | 64,180,000 | -2,251,000 | -3.4 |
Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive