National Newspaper ABC Round-Up – December 1998
Quality Market This round of national newspaper circulation figures, released by the ABC at the end of last week, shows that the Financial Times continues to perform more strongly than the rest of the market – up by 11.6%, or 38,000 copies, year on year. In fact, all of the other national broadsheets lost circulation in this period apart from the Sunday Times which held fairly steady at 1.3 million copies per issue.
Sales of the Daily Telegraph are slipping back towards the million mark, down by 44,022 to 1.05 million. It is the market leader amongst the broadsheets, even despite this fall in sales. The Sunday Business, which currently only has a monthly audit, was down slightly on November’s sales by 3,065 copies to 47,632.
Mid Market Only the two Mail titles are currently matching the FT‘s progress. The Daily Mail gained 112,415 sales between Jul-Dec 1997 and the same time last year; the Mail On Sunday was up by 92,899 copies.
The Express, arch-rival to the Mail, continues to suffer badly, this time dropping 83,591 in sales year on year. This is a decline which the poor recent TV ad campaign, created by St Luke’s (its third agency in a year), is very unlikely to reverse. The Express On Sunday is also in the doldrums, down by 113,279 copies. Compared to November, however, the Mail On Sunday lost over 40,000 copies. The two express titles dropped almost 30,000 in sales each since between November and December last year.
Popular Market The Mirror comes out decisively on top in these ABC figures, being the only popular tabloid to report an increase in its circulation – up by 13,940 copies to 2.34 million. This audit comes as the Mirror Group is in the centre of takeover talks in which the latest installment is a £915 million offer for the group by Regional Independent Media’s owners, Candover Investments (see Regional Independent Media Makes £913m Mirror Bid).
The Mirror Group’s Sunday Mirror, on the other hand is not faring so well: it lost 287,510 in sales on this period last year; the paper now circulates at just under 2 million copies per week.
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