Telegraph blames IRA for sales dip

The Sunday and Daily Telegraph newspapers have taken a tumble in the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for February.

The Telegraph claims the 3.02 per cent month on month fall in the Sunday’s sales and the daily’s 2.4 per cent drop were caused by the IRA bomb at Canary Wharf.

“The Friday night bomb pulled down production on the busiest day of the week for us,” says Telegraph marketing director Hugo Drayton. “We lost the launch of our fantasy World Cup Cricket promotion and it has caused a bit of a blip.”

The Daily Telegraph reported sales of 1,027,882 for February, but Drayton claims that they would have been closer to 1,043,000 without the IRA bomb.

February saw a small recovery in the fortunes of The Observer which rose to 461,367, a rise of 2.63 per cent month on month and its highest sales figure since November. However, the title’s average sales in the six months since its redesign remains 4.2 per cent down on the same six months a year previously.

A national radio campaign to promote an editorial special in The Observer’s Life magazine called Weird Stuff is known to have boosted sales during the first week of March to more than 490,000.