Day: 13 May 2011

This April was littered with Bank holidays and then a Bank holiday in May (not covered). But it normally leads to disruption, which in turn leads to lower newspaper purchasing. But his year seems to have bucked that trend as the market is up just shy of two thousand copies.

Granted, it’s the promotion happy Sunday market that made most of the gains. The month on month for the tabloids can nearly all be explained by a bumper (pun intended) Cheltenham in March, so they are simply returning to the status quo.

There is no weekly breakdown of the figures which, in this month is a pity. With a big wedding across the pond – no that nobody was going to watch! Indeed that’s why RTE One viewership at 12:43 was 247, 8000 people. I’d love to see what bounce the papers got out of the Wedding and moreover, I’d like to see who go the biggest spike in relative terms – although I have my suspicions.

The Sundays is where the swings were. Its seems not that the Mail On Sunday and the Sunday Times are at this point trading blows. One goes up the other down. The Mail on Sunday put on 4,600 copies and The Sunday Times lost 3,000.

The News of the World had a much needed “+” beside their numbers as they have had a spate of month on month declines but they are not alone there. Other than that there was nothing really news worthy, just minor ups and downs.