Britain's Guardian newspaper increased its circulation by 7.4 percent year-on-year in September thanks to a new smaller size, following similar gains by rival shrinking broadsheets.
The Guardian's new Berliner size - smaller than a broadsheet, larger than a tabloid and popular among continental newspaper publishers - helped attract more readers and pushed its monthly circulation to more than 400,000 for the first time in two and a half years, according to figures released on Friday by the UK's Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The Guardian launched the format on September 12. The Times continued to reap benefits from its decision to switch to a compact size last year with 5.8 percent year-on-year gains in September, pushing it to nearly 700,000 copies a day, according to the audit bureau.
The Daily Telegraph, Britain's best-selling quality newspaper, was down 0.4 percent to 904,000. It and the Financial Times are the only remaining national dailies printed in broadsheet form.
Quality newspapers on average were up 2.24 percent, but the more widely read tabloids did not fare as well, falling 2.5 percent from September 2004. The Daily Record and Daily Star took the biggest hits, with circulation down more than 5 percent at each.
The top-selling Sun tabloid, like the Times owned by a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, fell 1.1 percent to 3.3 million, and the Daily Mirror, published by Trinity Mirror, was down 2.9 percent to 1.7 million.
Britain's national Sunday tabloid newspapers declined by 5 percent from a year ago, driven down by the Daily Star Sunday, whose circulation fell 15.4 percent to 411,000, and The People, which dropped 9.7 percent to about 918,000.
The Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald all reported gains in September, according to the audited figures, while The Independent on Sunday, The Observer and The Business all down.
The Independent, which was the trailblazer for shrinking daily broadsheets, will soon become the first Sunday broadsheet newspaper to switch to a tabloid size.
Comments
Comments are closed.