ABC Analysis - Scotland: Only The Sun bucks newspaper sales decline
Overview by Fiona Booth – Research Manager
Sales of daily and Sunday newspapers in Scotland in November were down 0.9%* from October according to new figures released by ABC. The top three titles remain unchanged from last month - The Sun sold the most newspapers in Scotland in November with an average net circulation of 285,833, followed by sister titles the Sunday Mail and Daily Record selling 281,769 and 243,388 on average respectively.
Longer term, the Scottish market saw a steeper decline than the nationals, with total sales of the dailies and Sundays north of the Border down 5.2% when compared to last November.
Only four titles could claim circulation growth in Scotland from last month’s figures; the Daily Mail led the pack up 3,050 copies (+3.0%), followed by The Sun up 1,535 (+0.5%), the Daily Express up 325 (+0.6%) and the Guardian up 85 (+0.8%). Longer term, sales of the i in Scotland mirrored its national performance with the i being the only title to sell more copies this November than last north of the border, up 6,567 copies (+51.4%).
All of the homegrown and tartan-topped titles lost sales on last month and last year with the exception of The Sun which added 0.5% on October’s sales. While sales for The Sun were down by 8.8% on the same time last year, this was the best long term performance amongst the homegrown/tartan-topped group. Sister title The Sun Sunday fared less well, down 2.7% and saved from the bottom spot only by the Sunday Post who were down a lightly worse 2.9%. The Sunday Mail and Daily Record lost a negligible 0.1% each from last month but the Sunday fared much worse compared to this time last year, down 21.8% compared to only 8.8% down for the Daily. The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday were down 0.9% and 1.6% respectively versus last month, but versus last November were down 16.2% and 20.0% respectively.
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.