The red-top tabloids are having a torrid time on the sales front this summer. Latest ABC figures for June show only the Daily Star managed an increase on May.
The Daily Mirror – still said to be suffering a backlash over its fake Iraq torture pictures – dropped to 1,833,980, its lowest monthly figure this year.
The Mirror is down 5.3 per cent yearonyear and The Sun is down 4.5 per cent. The daily “popular” sector is the worst performer in the national press, with a total year-on-year fall of 3.4 per cent, which is equal to an average daily sale of 236,726.
All the Sunday red-tops showed month-on-month falls. The only popular Sunday reporting a year-on-year increase is the Daily Star Sunday.
The compact Independent is still making its impact felt in the daily quality market. Although its monthonmonth increase was less than one per cent, it was the paper’s ninth consecutive monthly rise, with sales of 261,575 – its best figure for six years.
June was the first full month The Independent was only available in its compact format and it is showing an increase of 18.8 per cent compared with June last year.
The Times was up 4.7 per cent on June 2003 as its compact edition went nationwide and the paper was up 1.4 per cent month-on-month.
The Guardian is still struggling to get back above last year’s average sales of more than 400,000. The Daily Telegraph in June dropped to its lowest monthly average sale of the year, at 906,098.
However, there was one good piece of news for the Guardian Media Group – a 3.2 per cent monthly rise for The Observer in June.
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