Reviewing the latest JNRS Circulation figures from NewsBrands Ireland makes for very interesting - if not unexpected gloomy reading.
The circulation of print titles was over 8% lower at the end of 2016 than in 2015.
8% less Daily Newspapers are sold each day now at 421,930 copies while the Sundays are almost 9% down to 609,987.
That's a lot of newsprint recycling lost in just one year.
Compared to 2005 though the figures are even more startling. Then the Irish Independent had a total of 170K copies split almost evenly betweek the broadsheet and the then'new' Compact. It looks as if the compact has almost completely cannibalised the Broadsheet with daily circulation now at 97K copies, the first time to dip below the 100K mark. The situation is the same across all the Daily titles: Irish Times has 114K copies then against 66K today. The Irish Sun 114K now 50K, The Star 100K now 51K, The Mirror 79K now 36K, The Examiner 59K now 30K, The Herald 88K now 41K. You'd have to wonder about the immediate mortality of the latter two. The Sundays still have some volume but showing the same trend: Independent down to 191K from 291K, World to 150K from 268K, Times at 79K from 102K. Business Post 31K from 48K. The Sun at 56K - slightly down from 58K. Also of note are the titles that have crashed and burned including: Ireland on Sunday 144K (now The Irish Mail at 79K); Sunday Tribune; Irish News of the World (166K) and the Irish People. 11 years has seen over 2 million copies taken out of circulation weekly from 5.1M copies in 2005 to 3.1M copies today.
That's a weekly average of 0.6 of a newspaper per caput today from an average of 1.3 newspapers a week in '05. Gloomy indeed. & Digital Subscriptions aren't anywhere close to replacing those lost copies. Download the detail and the readership figures below.
Newspaper Circulation 2016_KD9