madcomments

The Sun left red-faced by September ABCs

Posted in Media, Arif Durrani, Latest reporters' blogs October 12th, 2007 by Arif Durrani

The Sun was the only tabloid to increase its circulation in September in today’s ABCs and yet it is the only newspaper to be left truly embarrassed by its performance.

So why has a 1.76 per cent increase to 3,213,756, left the red-top so red-faced? On the surface it appears to be nothing short of another stable performance by the nation’s biggest selling newspaper, especially when compared to The Mirror, down 0.15 per cent to 1,584,742 and The Daily Star, down 2.64 per cent to 803,726.

However, what the ABCs mask is a dramatic cover price promotion currently running throughout the south east and Scotland which has seen the paper on sale for 20p instead of its usual 35p.

For the first time in its history, the 43 year-old paper is being aggressively touted on the streets of the capital by vendors, after a year’s master class by News International stablemate thelondonpaper.

It is also the first time the paper has launched such a sustained price reduction without any pressure from rival papers. The move has been widely interpreted as a last ditch effort to try and keep the paper from falling below the 3 million threshold.

Placed in this context, September’s uplift of some 60,000 readers begins to look less impressive. But it doesn’t end there. Yesterday, The Sun took the unusual step of blitzing media commentators with the news that it was “expecting our best y-on-y performance for 2 years with the ABCs tomorrow,” which left very little room for manoeuvre.

The official result was a September circulation that left its six-month average still down 2.25 per cent year on year to 3,112,540. Not a good day in the office. I was later informed that circulation results on their own are no longer of primary interest to the paper, which intends to pay more attention to its “aggregate audience” in the future, incorporating its readership and website data. With figures of some 22.2 million being bandied around, you can see why.

Elsewhere, it was the quality papers which grabbed the headlines, up more than 2 per cent as a collective, a figure which rises above 3 per cent for its Sunday siblings.

The Independent continued to live up to its reputation as the country’s most changeable newspaper, this time climbing 4.85 per cent to 251,470. The FT also posted strong gains of 3.37 per cent to 441,219 on the back of its second wave of brand marketing.

The Guardian saw circulation lift 3.32 per cent to 367,546, the The Times up 2.45 per cent to 654,482, and The Daily Telegraph was up 0.37 per cent to 890,973.
To read the news story related to this blog go to mad.co.uk