Mirror to move M magazine publication date to Saturday

The Mirror is moving the publication day of its successful women’s magazine M from Tuesday to the weekend in a bid to boost its circulation on Saturdays.

Readers will receive The Mirror newspaper, TV listings magazine The Look and M magazine on a Saturday from February 10.

M will be replaced by a smaller newsprint version with up to ten pages called M on Tuesday.

Trinity Mirror claims that it will be spending &£6m on marketing the new Saturday package, including TV advertising and direct mail over a two-month period.

The Saturday marketing drive will also coincide with the arrival in March of well-known astrologer Jonathan Cainer.

Margaret Harvey, marketing director, says: “Saturday is now a critical day of the week. It entices so many new readers to the newspaper and gives us the opportunity to promote other days.”

Trinity Mirror also claims that it has spent &£4m on product investment by moving M and creating M on Tuesday.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations does not split out sales figures for Saturday from weekdays, but a number of newspapers are known to perform better on Saturday than they do during the week.

Furthermore, the decline in the Sunday paper market means that newspapers are having to turn to Saturday to drive their sales across the rest of the week.

The Mirror’s average net circulation for the six months ending in December 2000 was down by 3.16 per cent year on year to 2,244,274.