Prior to its closure, and for the previous 50 years, it had the highest average issue readership of any national Sunday newspaper. Its final published National Readership Survey estimate (January-June 2011) was 7,217,000 adults.
So where did all these readers go? As NRS pointed out, the figures from the quarter three 2011 release were skewed while consumers were sampling out a variety of other Sunday papers in search of a replacement. Until the market settles down we won’t know where these readers have gone. Although with the launch of the Sunday edition of The Sun it is easy to see where the 4,434,000 readers that seemed have dropped out of the market following the last report will go.
So with the latest release I was keen to see what had happened in the market, and the answer is nothing. The Daily Star on Sunday saw a rise of 89,000, an increase of 10 per cent. Second were the Sunday Mirror and The People who both saw an increase of 7 per cent (260,000 and 89,000 more readers respectively) but that doesn’t account for everyone who used to read The News of the World.
When you drill down into these figures the number of males reading The Daily Star Sunday has actually fallen while 95,000 more women are reading the paper, an increase of 32 per cent. This is interesting for the media industry to note. Where we were previously targeting men through The News of the World it now seems that they are no longer reading a Sunday paper, which will have an impact on the way we plan.
The launch of the Sunday edition of The Sun is likely to change all this though. The Sun is in a fantastic position to fill this gap and bring these readers back into the Sunday market. In spite of everything that happened with The News of the World, it had a loyal readership base that were most likely reading The Sun in the week as well. With this strong brand loyalty, News International has the power to recapture these lost readers. Last week, they claimed a circulation figure of 3,260,000 for the first edition. Now obviously we won’t know whether this claim is valid until the official figures are released from ABC but I am interested in seeing the readership figures in the next NRS report.
The Sunday newspaper market is in a time of flux and as we can see from the latest NRS report, consumers have yet to make up their mind about where to pin their loyalty. Although I suspect that it’ll be the Sunday edition of The Sun that ultimately takes that mantle.
