‘English newspapers’ still sell 500,000 copies a day in Scotland
With the Scottish independence referendum just six weeks’ away, I thought I’d look at how Londonbased newspaper sales are doing north of the border.
For the purposes of this exercise, I am treating the separate Scottish operations of titles, such as the Sun and Daily Mail, as being London-based.
According to the latest ABC statistics, which were released today, overall sales remain pretty high. The Sun, long the top seller, still has the largest circulation, recording average sales of 238,493 in July (thereby outstripping the home-grown Daily Record by more than 38,000).
The Mail was next with 91,216 (which includes more than 2,000 bulks) and then came the Daily Express (47,969), the Daily Star (41,401), The Times (18,600), the i (17,820) and the Daily Telegraph (17,746) followed by the Record’s Trinity Mirror stablemate, the Daily Mirror (17,221).
The Guardian managed 9,621 while The Independent (2,680) and Financial Times (2,200) brought up the Scottish circulation rear. So, in total, the 11 “exported” English papers sold 504,967 copies a day in Scotland in July. A year ago, the total was 553,468, with every title having lost sales over the 12 months.
This slippage is in line with the overall market decline. Clearly, the independence debate has failed to stimulate newsprint interest. Although the returns are relatively small for all but the Sun, they do help to boost the overall circulation figures.
But 500,000 daily sales in Scotland cannot be said to indicate that a large portion of the Scottish population see themselves as British rather than Scottish. The news and sport content of the largest sellers - the Sun and Mail - is so very different from that of their English counterparts.
The others, to recall a phrase from my subbing past on the Mail in Manchester in the 1960s, simply “put a kilt on it.”
With varying degrees of enthusiasm, every title opposes independence. But the sales figures offer no clue to the outcome of the referendum.
theguardian.co.uk