One of Trinity Mirror’s biggest city dailies lost nearly a quarter of its circulation in the year to the end of January according to figures published today.
Monthly ABC figures showed the Birmingham Mail’s average print circulation down year-on-year from 37,956 to 28,945 – a drop of 24.7pc.
By contrast, the North Wales Daily Post was down only 6.2pc year-on-year while the Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News also managed to keep the decreases in single figures.
And combined monthly figures for print and digital circulations showed several titles increasing their sales during February including the Coventry Telegraph, Liverpool Echo, Sunday Echo, Teesside Gazette and Wales on Sunday.
Some of the Birmingham Mail’s rate of decline may be attributable to the axeing of a part paid-for, part-free edition which previously appeared on Fridays.
In the second half of 2014 the number of free Friday copies was reduced first from 37,000 to 25,000 and then to 15,000 copies before the operation ceased altogether in January.
Earlier this week the media commentator Roy Greenslade predicted that the Birmingham Mail would become the first regional daily to go digital only.
Trinity Mirror has however since confirmed to HTFP that it has no plans to make the Mail a digital-only product in the forseeable future.
Here are the figures in full, showing both the month-on-month changes for combined print and digital circulation and the year-on-year changes for print only.
| Table 1: Print and Digital Circulation change month-on-month | ||
| Title | February | M-on-M |
| Birmingham Mail | 28,570 | -1.3pc |
| Coventry Telegraph | 22,173 | 0.7pc |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 14,688 | -1.2pc |
| Liverpool Echo | 61,996 | 0.4pc |
| Liverpool Sunday Echo | 21,256 | 3.3pc |
| Manchester Evening News | 66,020 | -2.3pc |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 34,569 | 0.0pc |
| North Wales Daily Post | 25,275 | -1.8pc |
| South Wales Echo | 20,096 | -1.6pc |
| Sunday Mercury | 23,475 | -2.7pc |
| Sunday Sun | 29,567 | -2.9pc |
| Teesside Gazette | 26,595 | 0.6pc |
| The Journal | 16,165 | -4.3pc |
| Wales on Sunday | 15,323 | 1.0pc |
| Western Mail | 19,461 | -3.9pc |
| Table 2: Print-only circulation change year-on-year | ||
| Title | January | Y-on-Y |
| Birmingham Mail | 28,945 | -24.7pc |
| Coventry Telegraph | 21,872 | -11.8pc |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 14,640 | -11.0pc |
| Liverpool Echo | 61,172 | -8.8pc |
| Liverpool Sunday Echo | 20,568 | -35.1pc |
| Manchester Evening News | 67,280 | -6.6pc |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 34,355 | -13.6pc |
| North Wales Daily Post | 25,426 | -6.2pc |
| South Wales Echo | 20,219 | -14.9pc |
| Sunday Mercury | 24,130 | -16.6pc |
| Sunday Sun | 30,451 | -12.8pc |
| Teesside Gazette | 26,251 | -12.3pc |
| The Journal | 16,884 | -11.3pc |
| Wales on Sunday | 15,175 | -21.7pc |
| Western Mail | 19,910 | -17.8pc |
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Depressing news for print fans however you dress it up. But TM not alone. Sadly, the future stares us in face. We shall all be working for small papers, then just websites.
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Whoever is running the Midlands operation at TM wants sacking. The websites are a joke. The paper will be dead in 5 years at this rate
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Okay, here’s one for the budding Carol Vordermans of the media world:
Birmingham population: 1,092,330
Birmingham Mail circulation: 28,570
Its print audience is 2.6% of the population
Coventry population: 316,900
Coventry Telegraph circulation: 22,173
That’s a reach of 6.9%.
Teesside population: 174,700
Teesside Gazette circulation: 26,251
A reasonably impressive 15%
If I were an advertiser in the Midlands, I wouldn’t have much faith in the ability of my local paper to promote my product.
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The internet has got a lot to answer for. Sometimes I wish it had never been invented.
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Add at least 200,000 to the population figure for Teesside
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Slate Grey –
Express & Star area – population 1.6 million circ 71000 that’s a reach of 4.8% yet they are they biggest regional in the country
Gone are the days of 10% reach
Teeside population is 378000 reach of 6.9%
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We could get hung up on the figures of this for days, but you need to consider the footprint of the title, rather than its historic wider patch.
The core area covered by the Express & Star, for instance is actually 251,000, and the core area of the Teesside Gazette is encased not much further around the outlying areas of Middlesbrough, hence the 175,000 figure.
Either way up you look at it, it doesn’t matter whereabouts in the country you are, there is a certain creek where each newspaper has suddenly found itself, and didn’t have the wherewithal to bring a paddle.
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I try not to get hung up about many things these days but the Teesside Gazette’s circulation area includes Stockton-on-Tees, which has a bigger population than Middlesbrough, and Redcar & Cleveland with a population of 100,000-plus.
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