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British-owned tabloid sales fall
Sunday, February 22, 2009 By Catherine O’Mahony
The tabloid press, with some exceptions, was generally hit harder by the economic slowdown than quality titles according the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) 2008 Island of Ireland report. The Sunday World bucked the trend, increasing sales by 0.5 per cent, at 285,214, outperforming the rest of the tabloid sector.

The Sunday Business Post was the only national newspaper in the report to post a solid year-on-year increase in 2008 sales, reporting a rise of 2.1 per cent to an average of 54,993.

Sales of the Sunday Independent were 4.3 per cent down at 270,362,while the Sunday Tribune’s sales fell 4.8 percent to 66,672.

British-owned paper sales in Ireland were announced separately from this report. The Irish Mail on Sunday reported a 1.2 per cent rise in sales to 125,420. However, the Irish Daily Mail was down 9 per cent - at 54,338.

Within the Murdoch empire, the Sun was down more than 6 per cent at 99,646.However, the Sunday Times reported average Irish sales of 109,999 copies, up 5.3 per cent.

The Irish Daily Star, which buyers believe has seen its core market particularly affected by the downturn, separately reported that its sales averaged 105,031 in the last six months of 2008, down from more than 112,000 in the same period of 2007.

Star Sunday averaged 58,898 sales, versus 64,045 in the same period of 2007.

Among the remaining dailies, Dublin’s Evening Herald continued its downward trend, with an 8.7 per cent drop to 74,927 copies. The title has suffered a series of losses in successive ABC reports.

‘‘It’s hard to see that there will be a market for evening papers in a few years’ time,” said Joe Dalton of Precision Media.

‘‘People used to grab a paper at 5pm after work, but times have changed; we have things like Sky News. It just doesn’t seem to be there [the market for an evening paper] any more. What news can a paper really have at 5pm?”

Dalton said he was impressed by the results from the Sunday World and Sunday Business Post. ‘‘The Post is a niche product, and it’s very difficult to increase sales in a niche these days. It may have attracted more readers because of the credit crunch.”

The Irish Independent - which may have been affected in the latter part of the year by its stand-off on distribution with retailers, including the Spar group - fell 3.8 percent to 154,610.

In December, its sales dipped as low as 145,423. The Irish Times, which is not being sold in Dunnes Stores because of another dispute, was down 3 per cent at 115,462.

The Irish Examiner suffered a drop of 6.1 per cent to 52,544. Magazine sales also mostly fell, with the best-selling RTE Guide dropping 6 per cent back below the 100,000 sales mark at 94,822. TV Now was down 9 per cent at 30,326. Meanwhile, freely-distributed magazines from the Sky network increased their circulation, with its main magazine up to 518,974, from 454,283 a year ago.

Easy Food and Easy Health both lost ground, down 9 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively. Publisher Zahra said the declines were due to a change in Easy Food’s audit period and a move to distribute 10,000 free copies of Easy Health in GPs’ surgeries.

Among women’s magazines, Image was ahead at 27,940, up nearly 2 per cent, Prudence, the magazine which supports a frugal lifestyle as opposed to that put forward by a typical glossy magazine, was also ahead at 9,804 copies. Irish Tatler was also 4 per cent ahead at 27,407.

Meanwhile, online traffic appears to be on the increase, according to a report by Ireland metrix.

The public’s desire for instant information on the developing economic crisis produced an increase of 50 per cent in online traffic in January for www.irishtimes.ie, while the turmoil in house prices and rentals caused a similar increase in online traffic to Irish property website www.daft.ie, which recorded over 100 million monthly page views for the first time.

Since Ireland Metrix began monitoring sites in October 2008, other major news portals, including www.examiner.ie andwww.eircom.net, have seen increases of 15 to 25 per cent in their traffic.

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