The Independent needed to do something drastic to tackle its continually dwindling sales, but it’s possible owner Alexander Lebedev’s decision to launch a bitesize daily title ‘i’ at the end of last year, could assist the newspaper in falling further.
In June, ‘i’ closed the gap on its sister title as it posted the highest month-on-month rise of any daily or Sunday national.
According to the latest ABC figures, published last Friday, the 20p newspaper increased its circulation by 3.8% in June, reporting total sales that are less than 4,000 copies behind The Independent and selling more than 86,000 copies a day more on the newsstand.
Meanwhile, The Independent lost 26.4% of its sales compared to the previous year, recording the biggest decline of any daily title.
Elsewhere in the ABCs, not one newspaper succeeded in increasing its year-on-year sales figures, but the Mail on Sunday, which launched its Mail Rewards scheme last month to encourage customer loyalty to the newspaper and the Daily Mail, had the best performance. It kept its yearly loss to just 0.9% while the Daily Mail also recorded the smallest fall in the daily market.
Full ABC figures for June 2011
compiled for Retail Newsagent’s 22nd July edition
| TITLE | Core sales* | Monthly change (%) | Yearly change (%) | Estimated Retailer Margin (£)** | Total sales*** |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 8,866,470 | -1.37% | -5.60% | £1,156.10 | 9,774,845 |
| Daily Express | 587425 | -1.70 | -6.66 | 68.0 | 621871 |
| Daily Mail | 1811664 | -0.98 | -3.30 | 234.4 | 2047206 |
| Daily Mirror | 1114347 | -0.57 | -6.10 | 127.7 | 1170541 |
| Daily Record | 289108 | -2.23 | -7.60 | 36.2 | 305840 |
| Daily Star | 686706 | 0.59 | -14.52 | 55.4 | 708163 |
| Daily Telegraph | 597073 | -2.09 | -8.39 | 158.9 | 622719 |
| Financial Times | 73816 | -1.30 | -11.77 | 34.0 | 356194 |
| Guardian | 236742 | -2.91 | -14.92 | 67.0 | 256283 |
| Herald | 48465 | -3.91 | -16.08 | 10.7 | 48465 |
| i | 165395 | 3.83 | - | 6.9 | 173165 |
| Independent | 79203 | -3.23 | -26.43 | 19.6 | 176681 |
| Scotsman | 36905 | -2.37 | -11.14 | 8.4 | 40390 |
| The Sun | 2724251 | -2.07 | -5.42 | 217.9 | 2806746 |
| Times | 415370 | -1.94 | -14.46 | 110.9 | 440581 |
Full ABC figures for June 2011
compiled for Retail Newsagent’s 22nd July edition
| Sunday newspaper sales – June | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 9,042,265 | -1.3% | -7.1% | £2,705.3 | 9,661,928 |
| TITLE | Core sales* | Monthly change (%) | Yearly change (%) | Estimated Retailer Margin (£)** | Total sales*** |
| Daily Star Sun. | 289,582 | -0.6 | -15.5 | 60.8 | 305,978 |
| Ind. on Sunday | 70,453 | -0.2 | -14.7 | 31.7 | 151,229 |
| Mail on Sunday | 1,697,649 | 0.0 | -0.9 | 534.8 | 1,927,791 |
| News of World | 2,587,262 | -0.2 | -7.3 | 566.1 | 2,667,428 |
| Observer | 271,018 | -1.6 | -15.1 | 135.5 | 288,928 |
| People | 449,952 | -1.7 | -10.0 | 98.4 | 474,549 |
| Scotland on Sun. | 51,049 | -5.9 | -6.3 | 21.7 | 51,053 |
| Sun. Telegraph | 456,369 | -1.3 | -5.7 | 197.3 | 474,722 |
| Sunday Express | 504,303 | -4.5 | -5.1 | 144.2 | 539,478 |
| Sunday Herald | 29,233 | -9.5 | -30.8 | 8.9 | 29,233 |
| Sunday Mail | 343,177 | -0.5 | -8.0 | 105.7 | 360,475 |
| Sunday Mirror | 1,041,762 | -0.5 | -5.9 | 230.1 | 1,087,796 |
| Sunday Post | 302,095 | -0.6 | -7.8 | 79.8 | 302,420 |
| Sunday Times | 948,361 | -5.3 | -10.9 | 490.3 | 1,000,848 |
* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.
