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ABCs: Daily-to-weekly reverses sales decline

A newspapers which made the switch from daily to weekly publication in 2011 has managed to reverse its sales decline.

The Scunthorpe Telegraph made the change to weekly publication in August 2011 and was the only one of the titles which made the switch in recent years to post a sales increase for the second half of 2013.

The title, which is now part of Local World, saw its sales increase by 0.7pc year-on-year to 18,412.

Of the other titles to switch from daily to weekly, the rest continued to post circulation declines in the latest ABC figures.

Johnston Press turned five of its dailies to weekly publication in May 2012 but has now removed three of these from the audited figures altogether – the Northants Telegraph, the Northampton Chronicle and Echo and the Peterborough Telegraph.

The Scarborough News and the Halifax Courier, which also went weekly in 2012 both saw circulation declines of 10.9pc in the second half of 2013.

However their circulations at 13,191 and 16,747 respectively, although these figures are still up on their average sales from their final six months as dailies.

It is understood that 71 JP titles titles no longer feature in the ABCs, along with 28 Local World newspapers, the latter mainly free titles.

 

Asked about the decision to withdraw 70 of its titles from the ABC, a Johnston Press spokesman said:  “We recognise the importance of continuing to independently audit our titles and, without exception, will continue to publish JICREG readership figures for these titles.

“Our audit partner for the non-ABC audited titles is BPA – one of the worlds largest auditors of print media – which underpins our commitment to applying a high degree of trust on our circulation numbers.”

The Scunthorpe Telegraph aside, the other three Local World titles which went weekly in 2011 all continued to lose sales.

The Lincolnshire Echo’s circulation was down 4.7pc year-on-year to 19,687, the Torquay Herald Express was down 6.5pc to 24,529 and the Exeter Express & Echo’s circulation fell 3.9pc to 18,985.

Of the Trinity Mirror titles to go weekly, the Birmingham Post which made the switch in 2009, saw its circulation fall 13.9pc, and the Liverpool Post ceased publication last December after switching to weekly in 2011.

Also facing a double-digit sales decline after a relaunch in a different format was regional daily the Bristol Post, which had a revamp with a magazine-style front page in September, but had a year-on-year circulation decline of 15.8pc.

Following its relaunch with more magazine-style content, its sales were down from 28,841 in September to 26,296 in October, which have fallen further since then.

5 comments

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  • February 26, 2014 at 4:36 pm
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    In what can seem like an endless loop of bad news in the industry, I admire HTFP for sticking a headline on a story that contained sales declines of 13.9% and 15.8% that reads: ‘daily to weekly reverses sales decline’ – with a sales increase of 0.7%!

    And by withdrawing their Midlands titles from ABC how can JP expect us to believe their daily to weekly strategy is working?

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  • February 26, 2014 at 5:28 pm
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    It is despicable that JP has removed some of its weeklies from the ABC to disguise plummeting sales. So I will fill in the gaps. I can say for sure that two of the three weeklies named above (NT and Chron) are now selling about 16,000 each. These figures are massively below what JP wanted for its daily-to-weekly papers and have fallen from way above 20,000 when they originally turned weekly.

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  • February 27, 2014 at 8:47 am
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    We hear in JP that Halifax and Scarborough are to come off the ABC list next time around

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  • February 27, 2014 at 10:07 am
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    “The Scarborough News and the Halifax Courier, which also went weekly in 2012 both saw circulation declines of 10.9pc in the second half of 2013. However their circulations at 13,191 and 16,747 respectively, although these figures are still up on their average sales from their final six months as dailies.”
    I don’t know about Halifax, but the average Scarborough News sales for July to December 2012 were 17,261 (add the six monthly sales and divide by six).

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  • February 27, 2014 at 8:25 pm
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    I don’t know where you’ve got your figures from P Stoff but the Scarborough evening news hasn’t sold 17k for a decade!

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