Region’s dailies suffer continued circulation decline

DAILY newspapers across the West Midlands have suffered another drop in circulation while the weekly Birmingham Post has seen a 16% decline in sales, according to the latest figures from monitoring body the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

In its six-monthly report for the period January to June 2011, all of the region’s daily titles saw a drop in sales compared with the same period in 2010, reflecting the same trend seen 12 months ago.

However, the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star continues to be the UK’s highest selling non-national daily newspaper with average daily sales of 113,174, a drop of 7.4% year-on-year from 122,161.

The Worcester News has seen a small drop of just over 5% to 14,339 average daily sales while the Shropshire Star, which recently gained a new editor, sold 55,606 during the period, a fall of 8.7%.

In Staffordshire, the Burton Mail has seen the smallest drop of the West Midlands’ dailies with a 3.4% fall to 12,198 while the Stoke-based Sentinel sold 50,792, a fall of 4.6%.

The Birmingham Mail’s average daily sales dropped by 8.1% to 47,217 and its Trinity Mirror sister title the Coventry Telegraph fell by 7.9% to 34,359.

The ABC figures paint a similar picture for the region’s paid-for weeklies.

The Birmingham Post has seen an overall 23.7% decline in average weekly circulation from 13,221 in H1 2010 to 10,092 – the latter figure includes 3,370 ‘bulk’ sales to places such as airports and hotels.

Average weekly single copy sales fell year-on-year by around 16% from 7,902 to 6,645.

The Hereford Times saw a 3.9% fall to 33,886, the Bridgnorth Journal’s sales fell by 6.5% to 7,560 and the Sunday Mercury dropped by 9.3% to 41,851 average weekly sales.

Georgina Harvey, managing director of Trinity Mirror’s regionals division which also owns the Post and Sunday Mercury, said: “We are pleased with these results where for the third consecutive period we have seen an improving trend for the majority of our daily titles.”