December ABCs: another steady month

Capitalising on a Christmas general election, daily newspaper circulations held steady in December with the entire market up a marginal 0.1% period-on-period – though all titles continued to record year-on-year declines.

The Guardian continued to perform best, with its circulation up 3.4% over the month to more than 133,000 copies. The title also recorded the smallest yearly drop, at -5%.

Other titles to see their circulations rise in December included the Daily Telegraph (+2.8%), the Times (+1.4%) and the Daily Mail (+0.7%). The Sun – the most popular title in the market – had a flat month, maintaining its circulation of just over 1.2m.

Faring the worst over the period was the Daily Star, which was down -2.1% PoP and -15.1% YoY to a circulation of 283,000.

The Sunday market experienced a similar month, with the overall market down -0.9% PoP and -10.3% YoY.

Only the Observer and the Sunday Telegraph saw growth over the period, up 1.9% and 0.6%, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday tumbled -1.2% to 954,000, the Sun on Sunday dropped -0.6% to 1m and the Sunday Mirror fell 1.4% to 366,000.

Elsewhere, the London free press – which includes City A.M., the London Evening Standard, and the Metro (London) – saw its overall circulation decline by -1.1% PoP and -3.6% YoY to a total of 1.7m. The decline will no doubt be due to Londoners taking their winter breaks.

As ever, Mediatel News recommends reading the ABC figures – which only show print circulations – alongside the latest PAMCo cross platform readership figures.

Please note, this is the final time the Daily Telegraph will be included in ABC audits. On 16 Jan it announced it was looking at different omni-channel metrics in future.

Further information on individual titles can be found in the tables below.