Times In Circulation Row

News International, the owner of The Times newspaper, yesterday complained to the Audited Bureau of Circulation over its decision not to include circulation figures from Monday’s edition of the newspaper. The Times which is normally priced at 30p on weekdays and 40p on Saturdays is being sold at 10p from this week to launch Britain’s “summer of sport”.

The bureau made the decision to exclude the sales figures because The Times is allowing the newsagents to keep the entire 10p, which is against industry rules. However, Les Hinton, executive chairman of News International said “I do not understand how the ABC can decide to disallow copies of Monday’s issue of The Times that were genuinely sold through the news trade, when thousands of papers which are given away through so-called “bulk-sales” are consistently included in publisher’s ABC returns.”

The deputy chief executive of the bureau defended the decision by saying “The rules state that for copies to be included as trade sales they must give a positive contribution to the publisher. This is not the case if The Times is selling at 10p.”