Newspaper sales in Ireland declined in the second half of last year, with the market for daily and Sunday titles shrinking by 7 per cent, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). The circulation of all the main titles continues to retreat, the report shows.
Sales of The Irish Times fell 8.1 per cent in July-December 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. The newspaper’s print circulation is 88,356, a drop of 7,794 copies.
The Irish Times ePaper has a circulation of 2,277, taking the combined net sale for the print and digital editions of the title to 90,633. Sales of 2,348 of the Kindle edition are not included in the report.
The ABC Island of Ireland Report shows the Irish Independent’s circulation fell 5.5 per cent, with a year-on-year drop of 7,180 copies bringing its circulation down to 123,981. The broadsheet edition of the Irish Independent, which was discontinued in December, accounted for 27 per cent of its sales during the period. The newspaper is now compact-only.
Independent News and Media’s evening title, the Evening Herald, dipped 5.7 per cent to a circulation of 58,826.
TCH group
Sales of the Irish Examiner dropped below 40,000, with a 6 per cent fall leaving its circulation at 39,555.
The Evening Echo, its sister paper, declined 11 per cent to 16,560. Both titles are owned by the Cork-based Thomas Crosbie Holdings group.
TCH’s Sunday title, the Sunday Business Post, also fell below 40,000 copies. Its sales declined 11.5 per cent year-on-year to 39,416.
The Sunday Independent remains the biggest-selling title in the Sunday market with a circulation of 237,185. This was down 5.4 per cent, or 13,456 copies.
Meanwhile, sales of the Sunday World were 217,141, down 13.6 per cent.
Separate ABC figures show that British-published newspapers also saw their Irish sales drop in the second half of last year. The most stable performer was the Irish Daily Mail, which declined just 0.7 per cent to 48,983.
The Sun’s circulation fell 8.3 per cent to 69,541, while the Mirror was 4.2 per cent lower at 56,709. The Star had a circulation of 64,848 copies in the Republic, down 13.2 per cent.
British Sunday red-tops
The circulation of the Sunday Times was down 8.1 per cent to 100,720. Among the British-published Sunday red-tops, the Sunday Mirror plunged almost 39 per cent to 40,687 as it lost the gains it had made in 2011 following the closure of the News of the World.
The UK edition of the Daily Star Sunday sold 25,580 copies here, down 36 per cent for the same reason. The Irish Mail on Sunday was at 101,686, down almost 11 per cent.
For its first full audited period, the Sun on Sunday had a circulation of 64,789.
The ABC report also shows that the circulation of the RTÉ Guide, Ireland’s biggest-selling consumer magazine, declined 16.8 per cent to 61,881.
