Daily Star Sunday bucks newspaper circulation trend

Northern & Shell’s Daily Star Sunday recorded an impressive 20.9% year-on-year circulation increase in an otherwise generally bleak September for Sunday newspapers.

Richard Desmond’s red-top title recorded a circulation of 485,415 for September, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABCs) figures.

However, suggestions the newspaper is undergoing a renaissance could be premature as it suffered a month-on-month decline of 8.97% after a high of 533,248 in August.

Guardian Media Group’s The Observer, Trinity Mirror’s Sunday Mirror and Associated Newspapers’ Mail on Sunday were the only three Sunday papers to register year-on-year circulation increases.

The Observer was up 3.11% from 458,002 to 472,252, the Sunday Mirror’s circulation lifted from 1,438,829 to 1,145,198, while the Mail on Sunday’s was up 0.12% from 3,847,225 to 3,623,424.

The Sunday Express and Sunday Sport were the two biggest year-on-year fallers, with circulation falls of 13.16% to 727,439 and 13.91 to 92,912 respectively.

The Sunday Times fell 6.06% year on year, while sister title News of the World fell 1.89% from 3,512,927 to 3,446,476.

Across the daily market, the Financial Times, which recently hiked its cover price, and Daily Star were the only two newspapers to lift their year-on-year circulations.

News International’s The Sun, which last month dropped its cover price from 35p to 20p across London and the South-east, witnessed a month-on-month circulation rise of 1.76%. The red-top, though, suffered a year-on-year fall of 0.10%.