Insight Analysis: Doing The Business – How Financial Titles Are Challenging The Circulation Slide
In the latest national newspaper circulations audit from the ABC, the two papers to show the highest year on year percentage growth were both business titles – the Financial Times and the Sunday Business – with circulations up 18.7% and 14.7% respectively. The Sunday Business, admittedly, has a relatively small base circulation from which to make a 14.7% jump, but the FT has proven consistently for a number of years now that there’s definitely room for growth in the business newspaper sector. In fact the FT has just undergone a number of changes to increase its business coverage. From today, the UK & Ireland edition of the paper will contain a new supplement, Creative Business, along with further editorial changes reflecting the changing nature of the UK business scene.
The FT is clearly doing something right, boasting a 45% growth over the last three years. According to the European Business Readership Survey (EBRS) 43%, more than 37,000, of the UK’s most senior business people read the paper. The EBRS estimates that there are around 87,000 of these senior business people in the UK and 378,000 across the whole of Europe. Considering this set of people comprises just 0.2% of the European population, it’s clear it is an elite group – they are 90% male, on average 46 years old with an annual salary of £72,000.
Of the remaining daily papers, the Times is the next-favoured, with readership from a third of key business individuals; a quarter read the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. Whilst the weekly publications, on the whole, get a lower business readership than the dailies in the EBRS, the Sunday Times is by far the most popular title overall, with a readership of 44,000 – more than half of the business top brass on the survey. The Economist is also well-used by top business professionals, with a 14% readership, as is the Mail On Sunday, taking 33%.
That London is the locus for much of the UK’s business community is demonstrated by the fact that the Evening Standard commands a higher readership from this group, at just over 10,000 readers or 12%, than the Guardian, Independent and Express.