Scottish newspapers suffer steep sales falls

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/jan/15/abcs-scotland

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One of the overlooked facts that emerges from the latest set of ABC statistics is the parlous state of newspaper sales in Scotland.

According to the circulation figures for December 2012 compared to December 2011, there were dramatic year-on-year falls for all the country's main newsprint titles. And the story was the same across all sectors.

Last month, the Daily Record sold an average of 250,096 copies a day compared to 274,505 in the previous December, a drop of 8.8%.

Its Sunday stablemate, the Sunday Mail, did much worse by falling from a sale of 365,232 to 285,028, a decrease of 21.9%. And the Sunday Post, once Scotland's working class secular bible, continued its long decline by falling from a sale of 301,841 down to 245,727. That's a drop of 18.6%.

The Scotsman, the Edinburgh paper that once regarded itself as the national paper of Scotland, registered a sale of 38,647 at the end of 2011. Last month, it was down by 15.5% to 32,463. Its seventh-day stablemate, Scotland on Sunday, performed even worse, with an 18.4% fall from 45,652 to 37,252.

As for the Scottish Sun, its fall - from 302,823 copies to 276,154 - amounted to an 8.8% dip. There were falls too for all the Scottish editions of the London-based dailies - examples: Daily Star (-14%), Daily Express (-11.6%) and the Daily Mail (-5.2%) - with the single exception on The Independent's 20p i, which increased its sale from 12,437 to 18,214, a rise of 46.5%.

The other large-selling Scots-based papers prefer to be assessed by ABC as regional titles and the audit is therefore conducted on a six-monthly basis. They include the Glasgow-based Herald and its Sunday sister, which pulled out of the monthly returns last June when their year-on-year decreases were running at 9.6% and 12.8& respectively.

In the first half of last year, the Dundee-based Courier was selling 56,243, some 9% fewer than in the same period of 2011 while the Aberdeen Press & Journal was selling 68,659, only 3.4% fewer.<br /> <br /><em>Hat tips:</em> allmediaScotland/newsnetScotland