National Newspapers Pagination Report

Pagination reports are available to MediaTel subscribers in the Press-Pagination database.

Following MediaTel Group’s ‘Future of National Newspapers’ seminar held in London yesterday, Newsline has highlighted some pagination trends for daily and Sunday newspapers.

Over the past 10 years, the national newspaper market has been in gradual decline, losing 18.6% of overall sales between 1999 and 2008, while readership of national dailies fell 22% over the same period.

What’s happened to the actual publications?

MediaTel holds historic pagination data for the national newspaper market within the Pagination database, provided by Nielsen Media Research, which shows that the majority of national newspapers have reduced the number of pages.

Some titles have bucked the trend though, with the number of pages in the News of The World and Sunday Mirror up by an impressive 25% and 20% respectively, while the People is also up, by 15% year on year.

Most titles have seen a drop in classified pages over the past five years as revenues migrate online. Recent figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau show that online classifieds were up 22.2% to £715.2 million in 2008.

One of the most prominent declines in classified pages has been for the London Evening Standard, dropping the number of classified pages by 70% over the past five years.

There have, however, been increases at some titles, such as the mid-market Daily Express and Daily Mail.

So far this year, classified and classified and display pages across the quality titles are down 11%-26%.

As the recession continues to bite, the outlook for newspaper display advertising is poor. GroupM forecasts that national newspapers will show a fall 18.6% for 2009 and -8.7% for 2010, while ZenithOptimedia predicts that newspapers as a whole will fall 17% this year and 3.7% next year.

In the daily quality market the Daily Telegraph has been the exception to the trend in falling display pages, recording a 1% increase.

Of the 25% increase in total pages in the News of the World, 15% of this is additional display advertising pages.