Consumer ABCs: News & Current Affairs

By some distance, The Economist remains the best-selling news and current affairs title according to the latest ABC figures.

Unfazed by a price rise at the start of 2019, the title ended the year with a period-on-period circulation boost of almost 6% and a year-on-year rise of almost 5%. The title has a total global circulation of 909,500 – with 153,000 in the UK.

However, as with any magazine title operating over multiple markets and formats, it is worth digesting the full ABC certificate to understand how this global figure breaks down and to note that different titles in the market report in different ways.

Meanwhile, Private Eye, which places second in the rankings, made the most of our politically curious times and recorded a healthy 3% boost both PoP and YoY. The title now sells a little over 240,500.

Ranking third, Time Magazine (EMEA region) was down 11% YoY to 148,650, while the UK version was down more than -43% to 34,500.

Elsewhere, Dennis’ The Week Junior once again recorded the strongest year-on-year growth out of all titles in the market, up 19.4% to 72,300.

However, its parent publication, The Week, suffered a -2.4% decline PoP and -6.3% YoY to 141,700.

The Spectator (which pulled out of the ABC’s ‘double counting’ and so does not count a ‘print and digital subscription’ as two separate subscriptions) enjoyed a 7.5% PoP rise in circulations to a little over 82,000.

ABC