Here’s an interesting one: Delving back to early 2007, this chart shows the number of broadsheet verses compact editions of the Irish Independent Actively Purchased.
The actively purchased is used as I wanted to strip out bulks and see if the buying habits of the ‘hand in pockets’ population were swaying towards or away to a particular format. Non bulk sales of the compact are 81,352 (61%) whilst sales of the broadsheet are 51,186 copies per day. Broadsheet numbers are down 10,000 copies whilst the compact is up 4,000 over the two years.
So there is a definitive shift towards the compact. Considering that the first full audited 6 month period from June to December 2004, the compact was showing about 40% of the actively purchased sales it shows that there is an ever growing appetite for the smaller version.
