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Sunday Express Benefits Most from the Royal Wedding in April’s ABCs

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

May 17, 2011 | 3 min read

Jenny McManus, press account director at Feather Brooksbank, reviews the April ABCs.

The April national press market is up, albeit marginally, on March with the mids and quals in particular having turned in a decent improvement on March. The Royal Wedding and Bank Holidays seem to have had a positive effect on newspaper sales period on period although year on year the declines in the main continue.

The mids especially have performed strongly in April, however it is the Sunday Express that has outperformed everyone, up a whopping 12.84% on March. This sizeable increase in copy sales is likely to be attributed to their coverage of the Royal Wedding as there have been no price cutting or incentives in the title of late. In true Northern & Shell style the Royal Wedding content is continuing throughout May with various stand alones and specials so it will be interesting to see if these positive figures continue into May ABCs. This title is in fact one of very few to be showing significant year on year increases (4.76%).

The Sunday market in general has had a good month across all sectors up 1.5%. The Independent on Sunday is currently enjoying its 4th consecutive period on period increase and both the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Star Sunday have had increases in excess of 5% on March. The News of the World however is down by 2.18% since March and a considerable -10.3% year on year. This is similar story with the other News International Sunday stablemate the Sunday Times down 1.31% since March and – 10.3% year on year. The Sunday Times is still of course the biggest selling quality Sunday title.

The i, whose launch has been widely regarded in publishing circles as hugely successful, has dipped by almost 6% compared to March to a sale of 161,151. Nonetheless, the first Saturday edition of the i launched on 7th May displaying a increased commitment into this title by its publishers.

The Daily Telegraph boosted its copy sales by over 13,000 since March and incurred a period on period increase of over 2%, the Guardian and the Times also had slight increases in April.

In the popular sector only the Daily Mirror had anything to shout about in April up 1.46% with the Sun and Star down 1.23% and 1.01% respectively.

In Scotland, the Sunday Herald has dropped below the 30,000 mark and although the rate of decline has slowed of late since the refresh of the title in January, this latest dip will be a blow to publishers. Having said that, the indigenous Scottish Sunday market is down across the board with Scotland on Sunday suffering the worst hit dropping over 10% of its circulation period on period. Only the national mid market Sunday’s have increased their Scottish sale.

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