There is one startling omission from the latest set of regional newspaper sales figures produced by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).
No comparative statistics are provided for Trinity Mirror’s stable of titles to show the difference between their performance in the January-June 2015 period with the same six months in 2014.
According to ABC, the problem is that Trinity Mirror, which changed its reporting period from six-monthly to monthly, has now gone back to six-monthly. So, said an ABC spokesman, “there is no actual comparable period.”
In order to get some fix on the state of affairs at the publisher’s 11 daily titles, I have therefore compared their sales in June 2014 with those just released for the first half of this year. (I agree that this exercise is anything but perfect, but the change of mind over auditing should not be allowed to conceal the reality of decline).
So here goes. The first figure is the average daily sale for June 2014 and the second is the figure for averages over January-June 2015. These are followed by the percentage difference.
Birmingham Mail: 36,694; 27,662; -24.6%
Coventry Telegraph 23,169; 21,306; -8%
Daily Post (Wales) 26,348; 24,713; -6.2%
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 15,302; 14,051; -8.9%
Liverpool Echo 62,422; 59,754; -4.3%
Manchester Evening News 70,458; 60,327; -14.4%
Newcastle Chronicle 35,796; 32,842; -8.3%
Newcastle Journal 17,396; 15,807; -9.1%
South Wales Echo 21,370; 19,329; -9.6%
Teesside Evening Gazette 26,845; 25,493; -5%
Wales - Western Mail 21,911; 18,641; -14.9%
These comparisons confirm the Birmingham Mail’s desperate situation and the increasing loss of buyers also in Manchester while illustrating the continuing strength of the Liverpool Echo.
Elsewhere, there is little to celebrate for Trinity Mirror, with the possible exception of Teesside, as sales go on falling away. It confirms the wisdom of the strategy being pursued by chief executive Simon Fox: print decline is accepted, and managed, as resources are used instead for digital innovation and expansion.
I noted, for example, Steve Dyson’s interesting take for HoldTheFrontPage, on Trinity Mirror’s intrusion into Northern Ireland with its online-only platform Belfast Live, which appears to have had a surprising measure of success.
Of course, unlike those 11 legacy newspapers, there isn’t much profit - if any - in such enterprises. But building audiences will, in the end, surely attract advertisers. Has life ever been tougher for newspaper publishers?
