The Manchester Evening News has cemented its position as the best-performing title in the Trinity Mirror stable after figures showed its circulation dropped by just 1.65pc
Monthly ABC figures for the group’s big city daily and Sunday titles show the MEN averaged 70,458 daily copies in June 2014 compared to 71,642 a year earlier.
The figures appear to highlight the success of the paper’s part-free, part-paid-for distribution model in combating circulation decline.
On average, 31,506 copies of the paper were given away for free each day in June although this varies widely throughout the week with the paper mainly paid-for from Monday to Wednesday and predominantly free on Thursday and Friday.
On those two days, an average of 86,000 copies of the paper are distributed free within Manchester city centre, the Trafford park area of the city and at Manchester Airport via retailers as well as offices and hotels.
For the rest of the week, less than 3,000 copies are given away for free via hand-to-hand distributors at train, tram and bus stations and other high footfall points within the city centre.
Today’s figures showed double-digit year-on-year falls for some of the group’s other big city dailies including the Liverpool Echo, down 14.7pc, the South Wales Echo, down 17.6pc and the Birmingham Mail, down 10.8pc.
Sunday titles also fared badly with the Sunday Sun, Newcastle down 17.5pc, Birmingham’s Sunday Mercury down 18.4pc and Wales on Sunday down 27.3pc.
In terms of month-on-month comparisons, only the Coventry Telegraph showed an increase, up 0.8pc on the figures for May.
The full figures with year-on-year comparisons were as follows:
| Birmingham Mail | 36,694 | 41,157 | -10.84 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 23,169 | 26,600 | -12.90 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 15,302 | 17,115 | -10.59 |
| Liverpool Echo | 62,422 | 73,168 | -14.69 |
| Liverpool Sunday Echo | 21,673 | 0.00 | |
| Manchester Evening News | 70,458 | 71,642 | -1.65 |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 35,796 | 41,176 | -13.07 |
| North Wales Daily Post | 26,348 | 27,699 | -4.88 |
| South Wales Echo | 21,370 | 25,934 | -17.60 |
| Sunday Mercury | 24,282 | 29,755 | -18.39 |
| Sunday Sun | 30,214 | 36,642 | -17.54 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 26,845 | 31,527 | -14.85 |
| The Journal | 17,396 | 19,926 | -12.70 |
| Wales on Sunday | 15,655 | 21,526 | -27.27 |
| Western Mail | 21,911 | 23,598 | -7.15 |
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Ouch – You think the decline is steep and then it goes vertiginous. Scary.
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it is hard to see how some of these titles can carry on when digi revenues are still pants!
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Hardly surprising to see big declines when smartphones mean you can read all their stories for free pretty much anywhere you want. It’s like trying to sell shoes but then giving them away 100 yards down the road. You’d actually be astounded if anyone DID pay for them, it’s almost like a bizarre psychological test.
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Does this include the free copies or not? Is it the best performing Trinity title because it gives away so many copies or because its actual sales decline is less than everyone else’s?
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I don’t understand how any positive spin can be put on things like this.
A decline of 1.65%, no matter how admirable that is against the backdrop of huge double-digit declines, is still a decline.
I can assure you we’re not toasting the success of being 0.8% up on May’s sales when our year-on-year figure is almost -13%.
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A very good point made by I’mABitSlow. The Midlands titles give away thousands of copies that are counted as sales.
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Where is the great line “successfully managing decline” this year?!
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Hmm, so the title sells on average 38,952 copies per day (of which only 72% are at full rate). In Jan to June 2010 this title sold 65,612 copies per day and gave away 30,440 copies – so in four years the paid-for sale has decreased by 40.6%, but the number of free has been maintained. Are MEN leading the way in sales decline?
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