The results for the final month of 2012 are in and, surprisingly, no good news in that batch of figures. December is generally a slow month for newspaper sales and this year is fairly consistent with last year – back about 3% month on month.
The Star took yet another step backward loosing 2,000 copies on the month falling to an historically low 66,000. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they have lost nearly 6,500 copies since August alone and 8,000 on the year. It’s something of a freefall. Its close rival, The Sun, also saw its sales dropping by 2,000 to just shy of 66,000. The Daily Mirror bucked the trend and put on 500 copies.
Two of the big fallers were the Sunday Sun which dropped nearly 6,000 copies in the month and is now down to 56,000. A cursory glance at the figures from the main paper shows that it’s heading in the same direction.
The Sunday Times dropped nearly 4,000 on the month copies and tipped it under the 100,000 mark (again). It’s down nearly 7,000 year on year.
The morning market is down 6% year on year and the Sunday up 2.2%. Remove the Sunday Sun to compare like with like and the Sunday market is down nearly 11%.
These are the final figures for these papers. If the laggards in the business had their fingers out then today we could be analysing the six month figures for July December. But that would be too fast passed and we have to wait until the 21st of February for those figures to be published.
| Title | Dec-12 | Dec-11 | Nov-12 | Y/Y | Y/Y % | M/M |
| Daily Mirror | 55,913 | 56,360 | 55,354 | -447 | -0.8% | 559 |
| Daily Record | 477 | 531 | 500 | -54 | -10.2% | -23 |
| Irish Daily Star | 66,941 | 75,331 | 69,017 | -8,390 | -11.1% | -2,076 |
| The Sun | 65,714 | 70,597 | 67,737 | -4,883 | -6.9% | -2,023 |
| Tabloids | 189,045 | 202,819 | 192,608 | -13,774 | -6.8% | -3,563 |
| Daily Express | 2,689 | 3,037 | 2,754 | -348 | -11.5% | -65 |
| Irish Daily Mail | 48,672 | 48,569 | 49,081 | 103 | 0.2% | -409 |
| The Daily Telegraph | 2,802 | 2,969 | 2,759 | -167 | -5.6% | 43 |
| Financial Times | 2,865 | 3,520 | 2,913 | -655 | -18.6% | -48 |
| The Guardian | 3,175 | 3,580 | 3,139 | -405 | -11.3% | 36 |
| i | 468 | 0 | ||||
| The Independent | 0 | 858 | 2,913 | -858 | ||
| The Times | 2,065 | 2,187 | 2,097 | -122 | -5.6% | -32 |
| Morning Market | 251,313 | 268,007 | 258,264 | -16,694 | -6.2% | -6,951 |
| Daily Star – Sunday | 23,360 | 35,500 | 22,659 | -12,140 | -34.2% | 701 |
| The Sun/NotW | 56,749 | 62,560 | -5,811 | |||
| Sunday Mail | 1,055 | 1,206 | 1,060 | -151 | -12.5% | -5 |
| Sunday Mirror | 40,716 | 58,939 | 39,726 | -18,223 | -30.9% | 990 |
| The People | 16,688 | 25,896 | 17,645 | -9,208 | -35.6% | -957 |
| Sunday Express | 3,458 | 3,891 | 3,195 | -433 | -11.1% | 263 |
| Sunday Post | 627 | 716 | 636 | -89 | -12.4% | -9 |
| The Mail on Sunday | 106,851 | 106,731 | 107,797 | 120 | 0.1% | -946 |
| Independent on Sunday | 1,426 | – | -1,426 | |||
| The Observer | 6,220 | 6,770 | 6,406 | -550 | -8.1% | -186 |
| The Sunday Telegraph | 2,559 | 2,474 | 2,536 | 85 | 3.4% | 23 |
| The Sunday Times | 98,132 | 105,101 | 101,851 | -6,969 | -6.6% | -3,719 |
| Sunday Market | 356,415 | 348,650 | 366,071 | 7,765 | 2.2% | -9,656 |
| Racing Post | 5,580 | 6,169 | 5,345 | -589 | -9.5% | 235 |
| Total Market | 613,308 | 622,826 | 629,680 | -9,518 | -1.5% | -16,372 |