NRS National Newspaper Round-Up: January 2012 – December 2012

The latest figures from NRS for the period January 2012 – December 2012 show that the national newspaper market experienced, with only a handful of exceptions, further year on year declines.

The ‘i’ and the Independent on Sunday were the only papers to see significant growth, up 32.2% and 12.1%, respectively.

Daily Market

The ‘i’ and Financial Times were the only titles in the quality market, and in the daily titles overall, to increase their readership figures, up 32.2% and 0.6% YoY, respectively. The biggest decrease was seen by the Daily Telegraph, down -13.8%.

In the mid market, both the Daily Mail and Daily Express were down. The Daily Mail lost -4.4% of its total readership from the last period, but it was the Daily Express that really felt the strain, declining by -15.9% to a readership figure of 1,192,000.

The popular titles didn’t fair much better and all experienced losses, with the Daily Record sitting at the bottom of the table, though only marginally, down -7.9%. Though the Daily Record experienced the greatest percentage loss, it was the Sun that lost the most readers, down -473,000.

Sunday Market

In the quality market, the Independent on Sunday increased by a healthy 12.1% to 547,000 readers (a 59,000 increase), the only paper for the second year running to see any growth over the period. The Observer saw the greatest loss in the Sunday titles, down -7.9%.

In the mid market, neither the Mail on Sunday nor the Sunday Express increased their readership figures, with the Sunday Express taking a significant loss of -18.4% in comparison to the -1.7% readership decline experienced by the Mail on Sunday.

The Sun (Sunday) has no comparable percentage data but stayed close to the 6,000,000 readership mark, down only slightly from last year’s 6,057,000.

The Sunday Mirror and Sunday People weren’t far behind the Sunday Express, down -17.5% and -15.9%, respectively.