February 2012 Newspaper Circulations

The big story this month is what can only be described as The Sun’s (Sunday) maiden voyage.  And the launch fanfare was so great that it managed encouraged a euro out of a 109,000 punters pockets in its first week. Naturally there’s bound to be an element of ‘curtain twitching’ in the figure and next month will be a much better indication of its sale.

The comparison is going to be drawn and it’s that the Sun Sunday (SS) is still 8,600 behind where the NoW was in February 2011. Interestingly, the other papers that muscled in on the NoW readers when it closed manage to hang on to the vast majority of their hostages when the SoS appeared last month. Across the pond is another story: In May 2011 the NoW was selling 2.4m copies every Sunday. The Sun (Sunday) sold 3.06m copies nearly 700k more. Again, wait ‘till the dust settles and see where that stabilises   

The biggest faller, the Sunday Mirror, was the biggest gainer after the closure. It fell back 4,300 copies this month and the Sunday People dropped 1,400. The Mail on Sunday fell over 6,000 and I’d be weary of attributing that drop completely to the introduction of the SS and likewise the fall in the Sunday Times (-5,300).

The Sunday market managed a month on month rise, but is still down 24,000 on the previous year.

In the Morning market the Sun slipped another 1,700 and is dangerously close to falling into the 60’s.  The Mirror fell 1,300 and other than that all the papers managed to be roughly in the same position as last month.

Year on year its down 28,000 with the tabloids accounting for over 80% of that fall.