THE average sales gap between the two best-selling Scottish daily newspapers has slightly widened.
Say the September ABCs, the gap – as measured by Average Net Circulation – between The Scottish Sun and its nearest rival, the Daily Record, was 29,697. In August, it was 28,126 and in July, 26,861.
In September, The Scottish Sun’s average daily sale was 376,384 compared to the Record’s 346,687.
But this time last year – when the Sun was 20p as opposed to its current ‘full’ price of 30p – the gap was over 8,000 copies wider.
It prompted the Daily Record and Sunday Mail’s managing director, Mark Hollinshead, to say: “We have always maintained that the Sun in Scotland has shown an artificially-inflated sale which would not be sustainable at a full cover price.”
The ‘ABCs’ for September last year were 411,753 for the Scottish Sun and 373,702 for the Daily Record – a gap of 38,051.
Meanwhie, the average for the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, the Sunday Mail, was 428,513. It was 437,650 in August and 422,343 in July.
Average Net Circulation figures include free give-aways.
The other figures, at a glance, are:
Scottish News of the World 274,156 (compared to 281,805 for August), Sunday Post 256,823 (compared to 264,728), Scottish Daily Mail 120,808 (124,025), Scottish Mail on Sunday 108,632 (108,494), Scottish Daily Star 85,138 (86,308), Scottish Daily Express 73,352 (75,204), Sunday Times Scotland 69,942 (68,411), Scotland on Sunday 63,706 (63,909), The Herald 62,693 (63,568), The Scotsman 49,970 (51,653), Sunday Herald 43,622 (47,364), Scottish Sunday Express 40,995 (42,443), Scottish Daily Mirror 31,241 (31,634), The Times 29,983 (30,214), Scottish Daily Star – Sunday 29,798 (32,118), Scottish Sunday Mirror 27,029 (28,614), The Daily Telegraph 24,702 (25,496), The Observer 23,787 (22,927), Sunday Telegraph 20,776 (21,464), The People 18,892 (20,546), The Guardian 16,517 (16,948), The Independent 9,213 (9,867), The Independent on Sunday 7,604 (8,497) and Financial Times 5,363 (5,099).
