Royal Wedding fails to boost tabloid sales

Popular and mid-market newspapers failed to reap rewards for blanket coverage of November’s Royal Wedding announcement, according to latest ABC figures.

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The Sun and The Daily Mirror both saw circulation fall in November on October, despite trying to leverage Royal Wedding fever and the public’s hunger for gossip from ITV show The X Factor.

The overall average net circulation for popular titles dropped 1.87% month on month and 4.28% year on year, for the six months June to November.

The Sun fell marginally in November to 2,898,113 and dropped 2.96% year on year, while the Daily Mirror fell 3.08% to 1,177,629 and dropped 6.78% year on year. The Daily Star, now no longer on price promotion across the week, saw a drop of 4.64% to 756,686 month on month.

In the mid-market The Daily Mail dropped 1.34% on October to 2.1m, down 2.08% year on year. The Daily Express fell 0.47% month on month to 639.690 and is down 8.19% year on year.

Quality newspaper circulation also dropped across all titles with an overall fall of 1.29 % month and month and an aggregated 12.12% plunge for the six month period, year on year.

The Independent could be seeing cannibalisation from its sister digest title the i, which has not yet posted an ABC figure. The former fell 2.62% to 117,636 and is down 3.64% year on year.

The Guardian’s circulation fell 2.11% to 270,582, month on month and is down 13.1% year on year. The Daily Telegraph dipped 0.34% to 652,762 and is down 16.56% year on year. The Times, with its online content now behind a pay wall, saw its print edition fall 2.67% to 466,311 and is down 15.1% year on year.

The Financial Times, which recently celebrated an uplift in digital subscriptions, saw circulation slip 0.3% to 400,699 month on month.

The national Sunday market saw one bright spot with The Observer up 0.59% month on month to 315,316 but the title is down a massive 17.01% year on year. The Independent on Sunday fell 2.23% to 150,931 from October, The Sunday Telegraph dropped 0.98% to 501,430 and The Sunday Times, which launched an iPad app this week, fell 0.56% to 1.052,414.

Among the Sunday tabloid titles, the News of the World fell 2.08% month on month to 2,753,599 and the Sunday Mirror dropped 5.58% to 1,070,062. In the mid-market, the Mail on Sunday slipped 2.55% to 1,985,333, after climbing back to the 2 million mark in October.

Read an interview with the managing director of The Independent Andrew Mullins here