Current affairs magazines continued to boom in the first half of 2017 – albeit helped by double-counting for certain titles.
Private Eye remains top of the table with an average of 249,927 sales a fortnight, up 8.6 per cent year on year and a whisker below its all-time record set in the second half of 2016.
The Economist is in second place with 248,106 copies a week, and ahead if you are just counting UK and Ireland. However its figures are flattered by the fact that 60,486 of its subscribers are counted twice.
This is because of a quirk in the ABC rules which means that those subscribing to a print and digital bundle count twice provided that the combined circulation costs at least 20 per more than the top print-only price.
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Similarly the Spectator has 16,392 bundle subscribers who count twice, in both the print and digital columns.
Prospect’s year-on-year growth of 37.2 per cent is largely accounted for by a huge increase in existing print subscribers upgrading to a print and digital bundle. Some 12,880 prospect subscribers are counted twice, as both digital and print readers because they subscribe to a bundle.
The Week Junior has launched with an impressive 45,895 sales per week.
Current affairs magazine sales figures for the first half of 2017: (Source ABC)
| Product | Total | YoY% | UK ROI Total | UK ROI AP% |
| Private Eye | 249,927 | 8.6 | 235,883 | 99.8 |
| The Economist – United Kingdom Edition | 248,196 | 5 | 248,196 | 95.2 |
| The Week | 201,932 | -1.1 | 193,257 | 76.7 |
| The Spectator excluding Australia | 85,429 | 11.3 | 76,602 | 89.3 |
| Monocle | 81,504 | 7 | 12,451 | 96.3 |
| MoneyWeek | 45,940 | 1.5 | 45,208 | 98.9 |
| The Week Junior | 45,895 | 44,528 | 81.5 | |
| The Oldie | 45,296 | -2.4 | 42,426 | 95.9 |
| Prospect | 44,545 | 37.2 | 38,639 | 76.9 |
| The Spectator Australia | 8,341 | 5.9 |
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