The UK’s national Sunday newspapers dropped 4.39 per cent overall drop in December – only three newspapers increased their average sales year-on-year and two dropped by more than 12 per cent.
The Mail on Sunday increased sales year-on-year by 1.17 per cent to an average of 2,330,366 copies in the wake if its two-section relaunch on 13 January and a string of TV-promoted CD promotions. Meanwhile, midmarket rival the Sunday Express was was down 10.84 per cent with January sales of 704,436 – almost 90,000 less than a year ago.
The other risers were the Daily Star Sunday, up 1.07 per cent to, 382,288, and The Observer, up 0.17 per cent up to 444,951.
The People – whose editor Mark Thomas departed in November 2007 and has yet to be replaced – dropped 12.11 per cent year-on-year and sold an average of 669,362 – compared with 761,595 a year ago.
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The News of the World is sliding further away from its near-3.5m figure of January 2007 with sales of 3,264,676, a 4.73 per cent drop. Its rival the Sunday Mirror was down 6.40 per cent to 1,366,922.
The Sunday Sport, which is currently planning a relaunch with the help of magazines guru James Brown to become more like a daily men’s magazine – lost 12.88 per cent of its sales and is down to 87,307, 13,000 less than it sold last January.
The Sunday red-top market as a whole was the biggest loser in any newspaper sector with a January dip of 5.76 per cent compared to the same figure a year ago.
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The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph lost 4.43 per cent and 3.97 per cent of their sales year-on-year respectively.
In Scotland, the Sunday Herald lost 11.06 of its sales year-on-year dropping to 51,744.
An average of 12,379,112 Sunday papers were sold each week in January.
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