February 2015 ABC: The Plunge Continues

JTMan

Press Gazzette have their analysis here.

• Claim Sun unaffected by page 3 removal, despite 10% YoY drop.
• UK ABC's: Star down 12% YoY, Express down 9% YoY, Sunday Mail down 13% YoY, Guardian down 10% YoY, FT down 6% YoY.

Guardian have their analysis here.

• Roy says the Sun was effected in a major way by the page 3 removal.
• Roy: "Murdoch may be more alarmed, however, about the Sun on Sunday. Its continual decline over many months continued in February with a loss of more than 92,000 copies compared to the January total".
• Roy: "The Sunday market is continuing to decline at a significantly faster rate, something over 2%, than the daily market. The 10 nationally distributed London-based Sunday titles together sold a total of 6,233,154 copies in February. It is sobering to recall that the News of the World alone sold more than that 25 years or so ago."

iLevel have their analysis here.

• Morning market down just 4% YoY.
• Sunday market down 8% YoY.
• iLevel: "The Irish Daily Mail took a bit of a dive dropping 5% on the previous month"
• iLevel: " I estimate that the National Newspaper Market is currently worth around €310m, at the till, and there are a lot of mouths to feed from that. A one percent drop in circulation of all titles would equate to a €2m collective loss of revenue annually".

The journey into the sunset for print continues.

IRE60

JT

I made a bo11ox of those figs - used the wrong comparison - ave 6 month to feb as opposed to feb alone which it should be - just noticed and will correct these in a few hours.

This has been a sponsored broadcast by the truth commission!

JTMan

Ha! I was thinking that the drops were too small to be correct! We await your new article!

IRE60

#shuffles feet #coughs

The amended version is up now

JTMan

Thanks but I think aspects are still wrong.

For example, the morning market, for February 2014, states 408,415 which is not the sum of the column. Also, the percentage movement for the morning market YoY looks wrong.

IRE60

Positively fixed now

JTMan

Thanks!

The rapid decline in Sunday Times sales is the stand-out. One wonders if News UK will pull the plug on an Irish edition at some stage.

The Irish Daily Star engaged in 1 EUR price promotions, on occasions, at selected retailers, during February 2015, that might explain the circulation drop of only 6% YoY. Obviously, this number hides the big drop in revenue to Independent Star.

Is the Daily Record just being distributed to some Donegal retailers now?

One wonders what will give way next. For all these never ending print falls, there have been few causalities thus far.

doublej

cant see how you believe ST may pull plug in Ireland.

Looking at their sales , the RoI punches above its weight relative to size of market

Total circulation worldwide is 787,091

UK is 671,017
RoI is 83,753
overseas is 24,928
Middle east/asia edition 7,393


of the UK 671,017

628,516 circulate in England,wales and Northern Ireland and
42,501 circulate in Scotland

Of the 628,516 copies that circulate in E,W+N.I., only
433,656 copies are sold at retail,the other copies are a mix of subscription which have varying degrees of haircuts or discounts applied in the offer or are Multiple Copy sales(Bulks).

184,024 are noted as voucher subscriptions and a further 10,836 are Bulks.

The Scottish circulation of 42,501 has 37,170 retail sales and 5,331 voucher subscriptions.

The RoI circulation of 83,753 is totally sales through retail,i.e., no discounts for subscriptions and none of the print run diverted to bulk in Hotels or airports.

if you add the UK retail and RoI together, the total is 554,579; the RoI proportion is 15.10%, which is a very respectable marketshare; another way of looking at it is that one in 7 copies of The Sunday Times sold throughout the Uk and Ireland are sold in Ireland.

These Irish sales earned over 7.5 million euro last year for News UK after VAT, carrier and retailers costs are paid, and do not include the very substantial income derived from advertising sold through the NEWS UK Irish office.

If the Sunday Times did not have an Irish edition , sales would collapse (if we use the Sunday telegraph and Observer as comparators) and as we saw with the Independent on Sunday, any quality UK news only edition has a limited level of interest.

I think you will find that News UK are more concerned with the future of the title in Scotland rather than the Republic. A circulation of 42,501 for a nation with a population (5.3m) that is greater than the Republic is of much more concern, especially given the silly intervention from Mr Murdoch in the recent referendum.

JTMan

News UK is loss making. Newspaper sales are plunging for News UK, especially at the Sun.

Sales revenue is only going one way. Sunday Times Ireland sales are declining at 11% YoY.

Legacy revenue figures, without (1) salary figures, (2) cost apportion from the UK, (3) other full costs and (4) future projections makes it difficult to decipher what the the future break even point is. Conceivably, when you take into account cost apportionment, the Sunday Times Ireland is either loss making or barely profitable. Then when you factor in sales declining at 11% per annum, the future looks bleak.

Granted, there is lower hanging fruit, like the Scottish edition. There will be multiple casualties, in the coming years, as print goes into the sunset. News UK might tackle the Scottish edition first, but the speedily declining Irish edition is far from immune.