The Mail on Sunday’s circulation triumph is (cliché alert) a landmark moment. A middle market title is now the best-selling Sunday newspaper title, outselling all four red-tops and its own market rival, the Sunday Express.
Toppling the Sun on Sunday from its perch is some feat and surely heralds the day - possibly in 2016 - when the Daily Mail will also outsell the weekday Sun.
It has been doing that on a regular basis on Saturdays. In May, that margin was a whopping, not a Wapping, 118,535 copies.
I accept, as one should, that the MoS’s total is bolstered by 67,000 bulk sales (the copies sold at fraction of their cover price to enable airports, airlines and rail companies to give them away free).
I also note that the MoS spent lavishly to run a number of promotions during May. (Then again, the Sun on Sunday launched a new TV soap magazine). And I must concede that the MoS’s foreign sales are substantially greater than the Sun on Sunday’s total (55,000 as against 29,000). So, in full-rate UK sales, the Sun on Sunday remains the biggest seller.
Even so, the trend is clear. In a declining market, it is the case that the Sun titles are losing sales faster than the Mails. The era of the soaraway Sun is giving way to the paper favoured by middle England.
It certainly indicates the continuing demographic change in Britain, its middle classness, and the fact that the Sun represents an increasingly smaller proportion of the population.
In its heyday, the Sun was the paper of working class aspiration. Now the Mail embodies the next step in that process. British newspapers, even in this digital age, remain social class badges.
Maybe, and I agree this is more tentative, it also shows the virtue of having a free-to-access website. Mail Online complements its two newsprint platforms, reinforcing the strength of the brand.
By contrast, the Sun’s hard paywall turns people away to the Mail’s populist website and that draws them towards the newsprint Mail as well. Not sure of that. Just thinking out loud, really.
Anyway, the central substantive fact is beyond doubt. The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday are on their way to being the best-selling newsprint newspaper titles in Britain. The Sun is being eclipsed. Rupert Murdoch is ceding power to Viscount Rothermere.
