A fall of 26.73 per cent in sales of British daily newspapers in the Republic has been mainly attributed to new rules on the calculation of official sales figures. Sunday papers are revised down even more, with a decline of 27.56 per cent in the figures.
The figures may not, in fact, reflect any real decline, but a comparison of true figures, now available for the first time, against the inflated ones which had been used in the past. Early last year, the industry body, the National Newspapers of Ireland, claimed that a number of factors had led it to believe that the sales figures for some British newspapers in the Republic were inflated and that thousands of unsold copies were included in circulation figures.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation investigated and issued new rules for calculating their sales figures. The NNI believes this more accurately reflects the true sales position. The bureau has released figures for July to December, 1996, and the same period last year. This is the first time an audited period can be compared with a period calculated under the new rules.
The director of NNI, Mr Frank Cullen, said yesterday: "This is the first real opportunity we have had to properly compare two auditing periods since the new regulations were introduced. Now we have a much clearer picture of the extent to which many British publishers were overstating their figures."
The figures demonstrate some level of overstating in the reporting of sales. Some newspapers have shown an increase over the two periods, while the fall in oth ers might be against a strong Irish showing. Some titles only had small sales in Ireland anyway and a small drop in sales might give a dramatic percentage decline.
The most dramatic fall is the Times, down 65.76 per cent, from 16,970 copies to 5,811. Within the daily newspaper sector, other titles show radically different figures between the two periods. The Mirror is down from 66,218 to 42,365, 36 per cent; the Sun, 89,942 to 75,522, 16.03 per cent; the Daily Telegraph, 6,636 to 3,979, 40.04 per cent; the Guard- ian, 4,974 to 3,015, 39.38 per cent and the London Independent, 4,405 to 2,307, 47.63 per cent.
However, sales of the Daily Mail and the Express increased, from 4,497 to 6,127 and 4,017 to 4,307 respectively. Figures for the sales of Sunday newspapers show the News of the World is down from 181,038 copies to 153,532, 15.19 per cent; the Sunday Mirror, 88,188 to 46,783, 46.95 per cent; the People, 120,138 to 73,689, 38.66 per cent; the Independent on Sunday, 13,527 to 7,049, 47.89 per cent.
The Observer was down 49 per cent, from 17,861 to 9,038, and the Sunday Telegraph fell by 46.49 per cent from 8,166 to 4,370. The Sunday Times is down by 15.41 per cent, from 89,864 to 76,018. One side effect of the revised figures is that they somewhat undermine one of the arguments used by the newspaper industry when it is lobbying government for a reduction in VAT.
They also show that some of the aggressive sales tactics which have been used by some newspapers, the Sunday Times and the Times in particular, have not been as successful as first appeared.