The latest national press readership figures from NRS suggest the Daily Mail is still by far the most read national newspaper brand in the UK in print and online.
The figures use data from the National Readership Survey to give a monthly average print reach figure for the 12 months to the end of March.
They then combine that figure with data from Comscore for March 2016 to come up with a figure for combined monthly reach across print and digital for the various titles.
The Daily Mail/Mail Online remains the most read national newspaper in with a claimed monthly reach across print and online in the UK of more than 29m, slightly up quarter on quarter.
The Sun dropped its online paywall in November last year. That month Comscore said its website reached 1.8m readers a month on desktop computers and 2.3m a month on mobile.
In March this year, Comscore gave The Sun 2.8m readers per month on desktop and 2.9m per month on mobile, a big enough increase to cancel out print decline.
The Sun however remains in seventh place in the NRS chart. Pre-paywall it was the UK’s most-read national newspaper brand in print and online, according to the NRS.
The Sun is expected to relaunch its website in the next week or so.
Overall, the figures show mobile is by far the most important online platform for news providers in the UK.
Mail Online reached 20m readers a month on mobile in the UK in March 2016 according to Comscore, versus just under 9m on desktop computers.
The figures provided by NRS do not include Sunday titles.
UK ‘newsbrands’ readership for year to March 2016 compared with 2015 total (source NRS)
Title | Net print, PC and mobile Total | Total print April to March 2016 | Total PC March 2016 | Total Mobile March 2016 | Net print, PC and mobile 2015 | Total PC Nov 2015 | Total mobile Nov 2015 |
Daily Mail / dailymail.co.uk | 29455 | 10072 | 8735 | 20229 | 28870 | 9033 | 19348 |
The Guardian / theguardian.com | 24151 | 4030 | 8227 | 18887 | 24710 | 8822 | 18287 |
Daily Mirror / mirror.co.uk | 22912 | 5949 | 4956 | 16757 | 26116 | 5339 | 19400 |
The Daily Telegraph / telegraph.co.uk | 22492 | 3848 | 7665 | 16380 | 26274 | 9100 | 19115 |
Metro / metro.co.uk | 17960 | 10487 | 2190 | 9444 | 20220 | 2738 | 11900 |
The Independent / independent.co.uk | 17493 | 2336 | 4532 | 13907 | 19375 | 5262 | 14718 |
The Sun / thesun.co.uk | 14439 | 10955 | 2770 | 2919 | 13750 | 1782 | 2330 |
Daily Express / express.co.uk | 11123 | 2753 | 2561 | 7122 | 11412 | 2503 | 7289 |
London Evening Standard / standard.co.uk | 10511 | 5239 | 1705 | 6038 | 9980 | 1851 | 5102 |
Daily Star / dailystar.co.uk | 7447 | 2538 | 1062 | 4565 | 6782 | 915 | 3883 |
The Times / thetimes.co.uk | 5106 | 4473 | 436 | 551 | 5010 | 394 | 531 |
Daily Record / dailyrecord.co.uk | 4527 | 1174 | 691 | 3527 | 3938 | 719 | 2763 |
The Scotsman / scotsman.com | 1912 | 323 | 575 | 1250 | 1907 | 554 | 1225 |
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