October ABCs: Circulation drops across majority of titles

October was a poor month for newspapers, with circulation down almost entirely across the board.

In the dailies market (excluding freebies), every national newspaper recorded circulation declines both period-on-period (PoP) and year-on-year (YoY). The Financial Times suffered the least, down -0.1% PoP to 169,000 copies, followed by the Daily Telegraph, which dropped -0.8% to a circulation of 308,000.

At the other end of the scale, the Daily Mail‘s circulation dropped -2.6% over the month, the Daily Mirror was down -2.3%, the Times -1.5% and the Sun -1.4%.

Meanwhile, despite recording a -1.5% circulation decline PoP, The Guardian recorded the smallest year-on-year drop at -5.1% – following on from a strong performance last month.

In the Sunday market, both The Observer and the Sunday Telegraph managed to buck the trend, up 0.2% to 160,000 and 1% to 247,000, respectively.

However, the rest of the market was down over the month and every title in the market was down over the year.

Notably, the Sunday Times was down -0.6% PoP to just under 656,000 copies, the Mail on Sunday fell -1.1% to 960,000, the Sun on Sunday dropped -0.9% to 1.04 million and the Sunday Mirror tumbled -2% to a little under 380,000.

Elsewhere, in the London freebies market, the London Evening Standard and the Metro (London) both grew their circulations, with the Standard up 0.7% to 826,000 and the Metro up 0.5% to 861,000.