National newspaper ABCs show continued decline

National newspaper circulations continued to drop across the board in August year-on-year, while Sunday quality papers improved on July's decline with an overall monthly increase, according to statistics released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) today.

The national newspaper report from the ABC shows that audited Sunday quality publications including the Independent on Sunday, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Times recorded a monthly increase in daily circulations overall of 0.36 per cent on average, compared to a decrease of 1.83 per cent in July.

Daily mid-market newspapers saw the biggest overall monthly increases, with the Daily Mail and Daily Express recording circulation growth of 2.45 and 1.14 per cent on average respectively.

Quality newspapers overall saw the biggest decreases year-on-year, with morning titles dropping by 12.15 per cent on average and Sunday publications posting a 10.56 per cent decrease overall. The Guardian saw the biggest monthly decrease within quality titles, while the Times' circulation fell below 500,000 to 494,205, a 1.67 per cent decrease on July.

Key figures

The first figure in each category below denotes average net circulation for August 2010. The figure in brackets is the month-on-month percentage change for the average net circulation between July and August and the third figure shows the year-on-year percentage change between August 2009 and August 2010.

Morning papers:

Popular: 5,436,405 (-0.29) -4.41

Mid Market: 2,841,104 (+2.14) -2.10

Quality: 2,099,580 (-0.76) -12.31

Total average: 10,377,089 (+0.26) -5.52

Sunday papers:

Popular: 5,325,125 (-0.36) -7.78

Mid Market: 2,868,527 (+0.69) -4.87

Quality: 2,142,504 (+0.36) -10.56

Total average: 10,336,156 (+0.08) -7.59

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