The Manchester Evening News has agreed to return to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) following its decision to withdraw in August.

The company took the original choice because it said it felt its distribution model, whereby around 90,000 copies are handed out free in the city centre daily, would not be represented clearly, opting for a publisher’s statement instead.

Parent company MEN Media said yesterday that, following the announcement by ABC of changes to its rules from this month, it would be returning to ABC auditing.

It also comes just over a week after MEN Media announced it would be scaling back its free distribution of the Manchester Evening News to just Thursdays and Fridays.

MEN Media managing director Ruth Spratt said: “In August we said we hoped that in the not too distant future, through continued discussion, our more bespoke and transparent distribution pattern would be included within ABC rules and that we could move the Manchester Evening News back into ABC.

“This has now become a reality and we look forward to becoming part of the ABC auditing process at the beginning of the New Year.

“It is essential that all sections of the media industry work together to look for innovative ways to provide readers and advertisers with the most effective media offering and here at MEN Media we will continue to innovate across our print, broadcast and online offerings to achieve this.”

The next set of six-monthly ABC figures for the regional press are due out at the end of February.

Its new auditing process saw a change in its rules for daily papers with a free element as part of their circulation.

It states: “Circulation of these copies need not be consistent and regular on an every issue basis.

“However they must be consistent and regular on a day-by-day basis, so every Monday must be the same but can be different to Tuesday.

“For daily publications with any free circulation, the ABC certificate will show copies as an average circulation by day, so there will be an average Monday circulation for the audit period, an average Tuesday.

“However the overall ABC figure will still be the average per issue over the six month audit period so that comparisons can be made with other titles not reporting daily averages.

“Only dailies with free circulation will have to report daily averages. All other daily titles will continue to report exactly as they do now.”

Comments

DanDepan (05/01/2010 10:19:40)
Deck on the MEN Titanic is looking a bit tattered – must be all the shuffling of the deckchairs – still Ruth will no doubt be in line for a big bonus for this latest “brainwave”