FoI request reveals The Guardian is most popular newspaper at the BBC

The BBC bought more copies of The Guardian than any other newspaper last year with more than 75,000 purchased, equivalent to 205 copies per day.

The left-leaning title is the lowest selling UK-wide national newspaper.

However by far the largest number of newspapers delivered to the corporation comes from the News UK stable, including 73,596 copies of The Times and 59,961 copies of The Sun as well as 8,653 copies of the Sunday Times and 4,588 copies of the Sun on Sunday.

The least popular paper at the BBC was the Sunday Sport, with just 54 copies purchased.

The figures, revealed in a Freedom on Information request, relate to the 2015 calendar year. They include newspapers used for programme-making purposes but do not include papers delivered outside of the BBC’s managed service arrangement which is uses to purchase them.

This means the numbers could be higher if deliveries by local newsagents to individual BBC buildings were to be taken into account.

A BBC spokesperson said: “As an impartial international news broadcaster with three rolling TV news channels, 28 foreign language services, daily paper reviews as well as various radio and TV current affairs programmes our viewers rightly expect our presenters, journalists and expert contributors to be across all the day’s stories in all the UK newspapers.

“The BBC has secured a discount through its service contract ensuring value for money.”

In April the Guardian increased its cover price by 20p, bringing the weekday print edition to £2 and the Saturday edition to £2.90. It came after a price rise of the same amount a year earlier raised the weekday cover price to £1.80 and the Saturday edition to £2.70.

The full list of publications purchased by the BBC in 2015:

UK national newspapers ranked by average circulation (source ABC):

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