ABC Analysis : Scotland - March 2012
Overview by Fiona Booth – Research Manager
A bit of a gloomy report for Scotland this month, with every one of the home-grown titles seeing losses in March on the month and on the year.
The Scottish Sun overtook the Sunday Mail in March to become the highest circulating newspaper title in Scotland with an audited figure of 314,726. To add insult to injury, the Sunday Mail shed over 50,000 copies between February and March, beaten only by The Sun (Sunday) whose losses this month of around 83,000 were pretty much expected as the launch-issue-curious buyers didn’t repeat purchase in March. The Sun (Sunday) settled down to sales of 238,017 in Scotland in March.
The Daily Record rounds out the top three newspapers in Scotland in March, although circulation is down 1.5% on February. Over the longer term, the title has lost almost 10% of its sales since March 2011, but this is pretty much in line with the majority of the other Scottish indigenous newspapers.
The Herald didn’t fare too badly this month, with sales down a negligible 0.7% on February to 45,660. Sister title The Sunday Herald, however, dropped below the 30k mark to post circulation of 29,362. This is down 4.2% on February and 5.3% on the same time last year.
The Scotsman’s circulation also fell this month, down 1.3% on February to post an audited figure of 36,797. Stablemate Scotland on Sunday was down on last month by 2.1%, but compared to March 2011 it’s lost a whopping 10,000 copies which equates to 18.9% of its circulation. This is the sharpest annual fall in Scotland for all but The Independent who can, at least, blame their losses on reducing bulks.
The only newspaper titles to see any gains in Scotland this month were the Daily Mail (0.6%), the Guardian (0.8%) and i (3.3%). The i is also one of the two big winners when comparing this March to last, but its growth of 77.3% over the year is attributable in part to an increase in bulks. But it’s the Daily Star on Sunday who have yet again claimed the biggest sales growth over the course of the year, up a massive 77.3%. Whilst some of the other red tops appear to have lost the sales they picked up off the back of the News of the World’s demise, the Daily Star on Sunday appears to be the only title holding on to theirs.
All figures sourced from ABC