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ABC figures: How the regional dailies performed

All but one UK regional daily saw a year-on-year drop in circulation in the first half of 2013 according to the latest ABC figures.

The Trinity Mirror-owned Paisley Daily Express was the only paid-for daily title to post a sales rise in the period January to June with its circulation up 9.9pc.

Here’s the full list of how the regional daily and Sunday titles performed, in order of percentage sales increase or decrease.

A small number of daily titles do not appear in the list as they have switched from six-monthly to annual auditing.  They include the Western Morning News, Derby Telegraph, Gloucestershire Echo and The Citizen, Gloucester.

Title Jun-13  % paid-for  Change
Paisley Daily Express 7,567 100pc 9.9pc
Irish News 40,842 99.4pc -3pc
Guernsey Press & Star 14,448 92.2pc -3.8pc
Cambridge News 18,586 83.3pc -3.9pc
Press & Journal, Aberdeen 65,482 99.2pc -4.6pc
Birmingham Mail 40,280 86.6pc -4.7pc
Jersey Evening Post 17,076 97.9pc -4.7pc
Oxford Mail 16,569 100pc -5.6pc
Sunday Life 45,768 98.7pc -6.1pc
The Leader, Wrexham,  14,322 100pc -6.5pc
News Letter, Ulster 20,755 99.3pc -6.5pc
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 17,704 100pc -6.7pc
The Western Mail 23,723 94.6pc -6.7pc
Manchester Evening News 73,622 64.7pc -6.8pc
Dorset Echo 15,195 100pc -6.9pc
Dundee Courier & Advertiser 52,348 99.5pc -6.9pc
Burton Mail 10,785 99.5pc -7.1pc
Hull Daily Mail 38,309 100pc -7.1pc
Liverpool Echo 74,984 100pc -7.2pc
North Wales Daily Post  28,331 100pc -7.4pc
The Sentinel 41,898 100pc -7.6pc
Dundee Evening Telegraph 20,734 99.8pc -7.8pc
Swindon Advertiser 15,506 100pc -7.9pc
South Wales Argus 19,748 100pc -7.9pc
South Wales Echo 27,700 100pc -8.2pc
The Echo, Southend/Basildon 26,705 100pc -8.3pc
The Northern Echo 35,196 100pc -8.5pc
Carlisle News and Star West 3,933 100pc -8.6pc
South Wales Evening Post 33,479 98.2pc -8.6pc
Belfast Telegraph 49,228 77.2pc -8.6pc
North West Evening Mail 11,739 100pc -8.9pc
The Press, York 22,057 100pc -9.3pc
Express & Star 90,612 91.2pc -9.6pc
Yorkshire Post 34,175 96pc -9.7pc
Carlisle News and Star East 10,162 100pc -9.8pc
Southern Daily Echo 26,846 100pc -10.4pc
Worcester News 11,922 100pc -10.4pc
The Journal, Newcastle 20,875 100pc -10.4pc
Bradford Telegraph & Argus 21,641 100pc -10.4pc
The Post, Bristol 29,475 97.1pc -10.7pc
Teesside Evening Gazette 33,013 100pc -10.7pc
Coventry Telegraph 27,712 92.9pc -10.8pc
Aberdeen Evening Express 38,409 99.7pc -10.8pc
Eastern Daily Press 47,231 99.7pc -11.3pc
Bournemouth Daily Echo 22,007 100pc -11.4pc
Leicester Mercury 40,172 99pc -11.6pc
Nottingham Post 27,086 99.7pc -11.6pc
The Chronicle, Newcastle 43,308 100pc -12pc
Lancashire Telegraph 18,293 100pc -12.3pc
Wigan Evening Post 5,446 100pc -12.3pc
Wales on Sunday 23,416 100pc -12.4pc
Shields Gazette 12,004 100pc -12.5pc
The Bolton News 17,199 100pc -12.9pc
Shropshire Star 43,097 100pc -13.4pc
Sunday Mercury 31,982 93pc -13.6pc
The Gazette, Blackpool 16,524 100pc -13.9pc
Oldham Evening Chronicle 11,045 100pc -14pc
Yorkshire Evening Post 28,946 100pc -14.4pc
Evening Times, Glasgiow 39,234 100pc -14.6pc
Sunderland Echo/Football Echo 24,994 100pc -14.9pc
Edinburgh Evening News 30,176 98.3pc -15.3pc
Colchester Daily Gazette 12,889 100pc -15.5pc
Lancashire Evening Post 17,212 100pc -15.5pc
Hartlepool Mail 10,521 100pc -17.7pc
Norwich Evening News 12,947 100pc -17.8pc
The News, Portsmouth 30,570 100pc -17.9pc
Ipswich Star 15,084 68.7pc -18.2pc
Sunday Sun 37,588 100pc -19.4pc
East Anglian Daily Times 22,652 99.9pc -21.2pc
Doncaster Star 1,441 100pc -25.4pc
The Argus, Brighton 16,622 100pc -25.8pc

 

16 comments

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  • August 28, 2013 at 1:02 pm
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    Well done John H and his hardworking team at the PDE. This figure shows it can be done.

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  • August 28, 2013 at 1:19 pm
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    Ouch there are some big drops there! Kudos for bucking a trend, like, but the rest is eyewatering.

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  • August 28, 2013 at 1:49 pm
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    Eyebrox,

    That 10% is very few copies compared with what, for example, the Irish News would have to muster to get their 10%!

    Granted their figures were up but that’s like saying the Doncaster Star’s in freefall when 14 people moved house.

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  • August 28, 2013 at 1:57 pm
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    I suppose it can be done when newspapers are invested in and not decimated and overlooked in favour of the latest fad!

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  • August 28, 2013 at 2:48 pm
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    Circulation at teh Birghton Argus cut in half in three years – ouch!

    Time it went to a freebie? Obviously finding it impossible to compete with Metro and Evening Standard.

    Not surprising when a large population commutes into London and probably moved from London so have little or no real affinity for a place.

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  • August 28, 2013 at 4:19 pm
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    Another horrendous drop for The Gazette, Blackpool, and no wonder. On one side its full of seedy, trashy court stories splashed all over the pages. Residents know the place has problems, but they don’t want these written up like some pale imitation of a red-top and shoved down their throats every day.
    On the other side you have weekly-style “community news” where everything is awesome, fantastic, cool so that it reads like a public relations brochure.
    The only “campaign” I can recall is one on behalf of the corporate entertainments industry in favour of early hours boozing. That has gone down like a lead balloon with potential readers who have to put up with drunks, fights, vandalism, etc, outside their front doors.
    It may get a few adverts, but it won’t do anything for circulation.
    The paper, like the Manchester Evening News, does not know who its readers are. That’s partly because both papers are increasingly staffed by middle class graduates churned out by the journalism colleges who live in their own little bubble.

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  • August 28, 2013 at 5:36 pm
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    I’m surprised any of these newspaper have survived so long once the monopoly on press releases disappeared when the internet came in. I would hazard that you could condense the amount of original content per paper, per issue into a single page on most papers.

    Local newspapers are rubbish – let’s not pretend otherwise – and how many people under the age of 40 would ever pay for a copy? Some of the comments on this feed are also laughable: I’ve been a journalist for nearly 20 years and to suggest that newspapers don’t do any real journalism now due to cuts is very wide of the mark – they rarely ever did! Blaming “middle class graduates churned out by journalism colleges” for the demise of a crap product is also dumb – it’s more likely that they can create better stories than the tired old hacks on here begging for redundancy.

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  • August 29, 2013 at 10:57 am
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    These are difficult times for newspapers. Almost all of them are losing sales and journalists on a number of these titles are being forced to watch as the fat-cat owners of their papers gleefully hasten the decline, hiking cover prices and maximising profits with no concern for the devastating long-term consequences. It seems they don’t care about the loss of readers or the despair of their staff. Few of them focus their blinkered eyes on anything beyond the next three months.

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  • August 29, 2013 at 12:33 pm
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    Dear me.

    What a hatchet job on the Gazette.

    You wouldn’t happen to have any connection with the Blackpool Citizen, would you, Mr Dover?

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  • August 29, 2013 at 1:43 pm
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    Yet another complete disaster for Archant in Norfolk and Suffolk, theyre a rudderless ship crashing from one crisis to the next,i can only assume on the back of these god awful figures they will at least be reducing their ad rates to reflect the diminishing audience for their two (morning) papers in Norwich,How sad to see how far the once mighty have fallen in such a relatively short time .

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  • August 29, 2013 at 2:26 pm
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    Paisley Express is one of the few (if not the only) regional title in which Trinity Mirror has invested. What does that tell you?

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  • August 29, 2013 at 4:11 pm
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    What’s happened to the Derby Telegraph figures?

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  • August 29, 2013 at 4:28 pm
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    I think it’s inevitable some of these dailies, such as the Lancashire Evening Post, will be turned into weeklies within a year, based on those figures.
    Explains why JP registered lancashirepost.co.uk as a domain in May last year.

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  • August 29, 2013 at 5:26 pm
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    I think Neil Hodge is a little unkind when he states “Local newspapers are rubbish – let’s not pretend otherwise”. There are some poor local papers, but there are also some good local papers.

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  • September 2, 2013 at 1:23 pm
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    In reply to Bluestringer…No I don’t have any connection with the Blackpool Citizen.
    In reply to Mr Hodge…Some of the graduates are fine, as long as they are writing for the Guardian or New Statesman or something equally erudite (should that be pretentious?).
    The problem is, there aren’t many Guardian or New Statesman readers in Blackpool.
    What I am saying is that today regional journalists too often come from the same narrow background. Looking at the evenings, I get the impression that all page designers are trying to get jobs on the Daily Star.
    It’s ironic that while journalists have never been better educated than they are today, their product has never been so boring.

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