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Red-tops fail to bounce back after holiday break
Stephen Brook
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Every red-top newspaper recorded a month-on-month and year-on-year fall last month, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Overall, the daily tabloids sold an average of 6,079,621 copies a day in September, a worrying fall of 1.12% on the holiday month of August and down 4.39% on September 2005, according to the sales figures for the five weeks from August 28 until October 2.
In contrast, the middle market dailies, the Express and Daily Mail, confined their year-on-year slide to 0.76% to sell an average of 3,229,583 copies a day.
The Daily Star, owned by Richard Desmond, was down 6.28% compared with September 2005 to sell a daily average of 800,569. This was a fall of 3.40% on August.
The Daily Mirror fell 6.20% on the year to sell 1,633,708 copies, a fall of 1.76% on August. It cushioned its fall with a children's DVD promotion, including Babar the Elephant.
The Sun, which boasts a larger marketing budget than either of its rivals, sold 3,216,918 copies each day last month, a fall of 2.52% on the year and 0.21% on August.
In the middle market, the Daily Mail, which costs 45p, joined the Independent to be the only daily paper to record year-on-year and monthly sales increases. It sold 2,410,641 copies, a rise of 1.55% year on year and up 1.23% on August.
The paper gave away a David Attenborough DVD collection, featuring more than a dozen episodes from his many BBC television series. It followed this with a series of educational wallcharts.
Richard Desmond's Express recorded only slight a sales decrease, down 1.50% on September 2005, to sell 818,942. This represented a fall since August of 1.27%
Every Sunday red-top newspaper lost year-on-year and month-on-month sales in September, meaning that 500,000 fewer copies on average were bought each Sunday last month than a year ago.
Total average circulation for Sunday red tops fell 7.07% compared with September 2005 to 6,814,834 copies, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The steepest slide was at The People, which sold 822,014 copies each week last month, down 10.1% on the year and a slide of 4.4% on August.
The Sunday Mirror had another steep year-on-year fall, down 6.14% to 1,438,829 - a 1.72% fall since August.
Market leader the News of the World sold 3,512,927 copies each week, down 6.81% on September 2005 and down 0.73% on August.
By contrast, in the middle market, the Mail on Sunday had a strong circulation performance despite raising its price to
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