H2 2014: ABC Irish Newspaper Stats

JTMan

Bi-annual ABC newspaper numbers at high noon tomorrow.

Reminder, from iLevel, of where we stood after the last instalment here.

Probably circa. 8% declines.

P.S. I have got a free copy of the Sunday Business Post in the gym every Sunday for the last few months. The SBP are playing bulk games. Their bulk number tomorrow will be interesting.

Loafing Oaf

Any sign of these? Is iLevel the first place we'll see them or is the raw data available somewhere else first?

jmcc

The Journal has something on it:

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/newspaper-figures-1946757-Feb2015/


Irish Independent: 112,502 (down 4.1% since end-December 2013)
Irish Times: 76,882 (down 6.3%)
The Herald: 49,512 (down 11.8%)
Irish Examiner: 34,424 (down 7%)


The analysis from ilevel should be very interesting.

Regards...jmcc

IRE60

Normally get the a little earlier in the day/morning - anyway

Morning
http://www.ilevel.ie/media-blog/print/abc-morning-newspaper-circulation-july-december-2014

Sunday:
http://www.ilevel.ie/media-blog/print/abc-sunday-newspaper-circulation-july-december-2014

C

Loafing Oaf

Hmm, maybe not the very worst book of recent years, although the nightmare continues for the tabloids. Could the SBP be bottoming out round 30K?

JTMan

A few thoughts:

• So the mornings are down 7.2% YoY and the Sundays down 6.8% YoY. YoY is a better comparison than the half year comparisons that the Journal used.
• Dreadful sensational biased trash analysis of the ABC numbers in the Indo here.
• Wonderful, as always, iLevel analysis. Conor makes a very valid point that there is no plan B for the tabloids as declines continue.
• The Herald, People, Observer, Sunday World and Express are amongst the bigger drops.
• The Times (UK) is the only one with increased sales. Why? No more UK Indo?
• Sunday Business Post bulks are now 1,100.
• Indo now only 86% actively purchased after taking our bulks.
• With the Irish Time Trust having large reserves and no debt, these sales declines are not going to cause overnight change. The long term future is a different story.
• These figures might bring the closure of the Herald and Sunday World a step closer. Not that anything is imminent.
• These figures just compound an already difficult situation at Landmark Media Investments, home of the Examiner and Echo. How low can the Echo sales go before the plug is pulled?

channelsurfer2

Daily Mail at -9.4% is interesting, having reduced their pages from 64 to 56 for cost cutting. I guess a lot of people dont feel its worth buying anymore with smartphones giving them what they want for free and almost instantly along with the other tabloids loosing out.

IRE60

The London Indi pulled out of the morning but still is active in the Sunday. The Independent article is pude sh1t and very one sided. Their reporting of the Times paywall was equally tragic. You might expect some analysis of how it might work etc- but no.

Anyway, the SBP figure in the last few months is something to watch as is the Sunday Indo who seems to be gaining traction of late (not reflected in the 6 month figure)

C

doublej

I'm sorry to inform you that the Independent on Sunday was pulled from the Irish market at the same time as the Mon to Sat Independent

IRE60

Double - you are correct!

I was looking to see the spin applied to the numbers

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/newspaper-sales-down-by-more-than-7-in-second-half-of-2014-1.2110155

It's staggering the slap dash numerics:

The Irish Times has a circulation of 76,882, which includes c7,000 copies which are sold outside the RoI - all straight up - north of the border and International editions.

In the article they give (for example) the Daily Star figure of 53,245 - which is only their figure for the RoI and doesn't include their Ni sales for the same edition as seen in the capital.

The Daily Star's actual daily average for those six months is 58,541 - a full 5,300 copies higher than quoted in the article.

I'm not an Daily Star apologist, or any of the other papers that have their circulation figures inaccurately stated in the article, but I think when the media can't report on themselves, accurately, then we are in trouble.

So, you either include NI sales for all papers or exclude them for all papers, you cant compare all Ireland sales for some papers to just RoI sales for others. Just doesn't make sense.

JTMan

Good spot IRE60.

Laura Slattery has a track record of spinning the numbers after ABC results. Her article also mentions bulks in the context of some of the IT competitors but not in the content of the IT. This is on top of the selective attention to Northern Irish sales numbers. This is not journalism, this is biased reporting.

However, her article is nowhere near the INM biased trash that the 'journalist' Peter Flanagan perpetrated.

Loafing Oaf

JTMan wrote: »

[*]These figures might bring the closure of the Herald and Sunday World a step closer. Not that anything is imminent.

Interested in why you single out out the Sunday World. Okay it's circulation declines are pretty steep but it's still at a pretty high level. Plus you'd think it would get a boost if one or more of its Brit rivals drop out of the Sunday market. Have you heard word that DOB isn't a tabloid man?

JTMan

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Interested in why you single out out the Sunday World. Okay it's circulation declines are pretty steep but it's still at a pretty high level. Plus you'd think it would get a boost if one or more of its Brit rivals drop out of the Sunday market. Have you heard word that DOB isn't a tabloid man?

Publication frequency, margins and circulation are obviously the main components of revenue. Whilst circulation numbers are high, for now, when you publish once a week and have a lower cover price, the overall break even point is much lower.

If DOB is in the game of agenda setting, that agenda game is far more prevalent in political, economic and business publications than celebrity and crime publications.

TMZ, Mail Online, Daily Edge and Gawker are the future of celebrity news, not the Sunday World.