NRS national newspaper round-up: April 13 – March 14

The latest NRS national newspaper figures once again chart a steady decline in print, with no titles recording any growth in readership at all for the period April 2013 to March 2014.

In the quality market, the Independent recorded an even greater drop in readership than last period – down -30.2% to lose 134,000 readers per issue, on average. Meanwhile, the paper’s sister title, ‘i’, dropped 16,000, though this was a significant improvement on last period’s loss of 53,000.

A -22.8% decline lost the Guardian 234,000 readers per issue – meaning that the title went from a little over a million readers a day to just under 800,000 – while an -11.2% decline lost the Times 145,000 readers, and a -2.9% decline lost the Daily Telegraph 39,000.

In the mid-market, the Daily Mail lost 171,000 of its 4.2 million average daily readers for the previous period, while the Daily Express dropped 43,000 to 1.1 million.

The popular market perhaps suffered the most this period, with a -15.2% decline seeing the nation’s favourite red-top, the Sun, lose over 1 million readers per issue – taking its total daily readership to just under 5.7 million.

The Daily Mirror was down -19.2% (dropping 547,000 readers), while the Daily Star was down -14.8% to lose 189,000. The Daily Record fared best out of all the popular titles, however still lost an average of 95,000 readers a day over the period.

In a change to previous NRS releases, the Financial Times is no longer reporting its data.

The Sunday titles fared similar to the dailies, with no growth in readership recorded – and some losing significant chunks of their audience.

The most well-read title in the quality market, the Sunday Times, dropped almost 200,000 readers per issue to an average of 2.4 million, while a -5.1% decline meant that second most read, the Sunday Telegraph, lost 70,000.

More bad news for the Independent, with its Sunday edition losing over a fifth of its readers to secure 420,000 per issue, while the Guardian’s weekend counterpart, the Observer, was down almost -14% to lose 134,000.

In the mid market, the Mail On Sunday lost almost half a million daily readers, while the Sunday Express lost just over 120,000.

However, it was the red-tops that were hardest hit with the Sun on Sunday losing almost 900,000, the Sunday Mirror just over 500,000, the Sunday People 280,000 and the Daily Star Sunday almost 100,000.