The Daily Telegraph has overtaken the The Guardian to become the most-read ‘quality’ newspaper brand in the UK, according to new data released by the Publishers Audience Management Company (Pamco).
It is the first data which partially combines the National Readership Survey (NRS) with a new Audience Measurement for Publishers (AMP) system.
Pamco are keen to stress that because of the new methodology any comparisons with previous NRS data are not like-for-like.
The NRS uses a face-to-face survey of 35,000 people to estimate monthly print readership for the year to March 2017 which is combined with Comscore digital data for the month of March.
The latest data puts Daily Mail/Mail Online top with 31.1m UK readers per month: 9.1m print, 7.7m PC (desktop) and 22.7m via mobile.
The Sun is in second place with 28.8m readers per month in print and online followed by the Mirror on 26.1m.
The Telegraph/Telegraph.co.uk is on 24.6m readers versus The Guardian on 24.2m readers per month. This compares with 22.7m readers per month for The Guardian versus 21.4m for the Telegraph in the last set of data released by the NRS in March 2017.
The Telegraph adopted a hard paywall in November 2016, opting to charge readers for premium content but keeping some articles free.
The data suggests The Guardian’s print, PC and mobile readership is higher than the Telegraph if added together. But the net readership figure (which is lower than the total) is supposed to account for deduplication.
The data suggests that free daily Metro is the most read print newspaper in the UK with a monthly print reach of 10.6m.
Despite closing its print edition, The Independent website has a higher monthly readership than the Express, Evening Standard, Star and Times.
The new figures are based on 75 per cent NRS data and 25 per cent AMP data as part of a phased introduction of the new system.
Newsbrand print/digital readership for year to March 2017
(digital data is Comscore for March 2017 – figures in thousands)
| Net print, PC and mob total | PC | Mobile | ||
| Daily Mail / dailymail.co.uk | 31,354 | 9,140 | 7,684 | 22,677 |
| The Sun / thesun.co.uk | 28,807 | 9,623 | 3,969 | 21,572 |
| Daily Mirror / mirror.co.uk | 26,143 | 5,312 | 4,115 | 20,718 |
| The Daily Telegraph / telegraph.co.uk | 24,616 | 3,671 | 7,017 | 18,644 |
| The Guardian / theguardian.com | 24,177 | 3,953 | 7,781 | 18,238 |
| Metro / metro.co.uk | 19,684 | 10,576 | 2,509 | 11,282 |
| No Print Publication / independent.co.uk | 19,143 | 4,493 | 16,355 | |
| Daily Express / express.co.uk | 13,453 | 2,578 | 3,427 | 9,107 |
| London Evening Standard / standard.co.uk | 12,912 | 5,160 | 2,039 | 8,837 |
| Daily Star / dailystar.co.uk | 8,122 | 2,274 | 1,623 | 5,027 |
| The Times / thetimes.co.uk | 6,353 | 4,093 | 868 | 2,253 |
| Daily Record / dailyrecord.co.uk | 4,916 | 1,115 | 716 | 3,836 |
| The Scotsman / scotsman.com | 1,411 | 318 | 475 | 781 |
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
