ABC Analysis – Scotland : August 2012
Overview by Fiona Booth – Research Manager
Sales of daily and Sunday newspapers in Scotland turned around in August to show an increase of 0.9%* on July as Olympic headlines and Scottish athlets laden with medals dominated most front pages. According to new figures released by ABC today, the top three titles stayed the same from July with The Sun on top the pack with an average net circulation in Scotland in August of 294,744. In second place again was the Sunday Mail with sales of 286,383 in August, ahead of sister title the Daily Record who posted 248,069 this month.
Longer term, the Scottish market is seeing a comparable decline to the national, with total sales of the dailies and Sundays north of the Border down 7.4% compared to this time last year.
All of the homegrown and tartan-topped titles picked up sales from last month with the exception of News International’s The Sun and The Sun Sunday. Compared to last year, however, it’s pretty dire for all of them, with The Sun doing “best” at losing only 7.8% sales on last August. The Sunday Mail has seen the steepest percentage decline out of this group over the year at down 26.1%, equating to a loss of 101,000 sales when compared to last August. The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday both saw healthy gains of 6.6% and 5.2% on July respectively, but versus this time last year the Scotsman is down 14.7% and its sister Sunday down even further by 22.7%.
All figures sourced from ABC
* The Herald and Sunday Herald are now only releasing six monthly figures and are therefore not included in this analysis.