ABC figures for Decem­ber show a significant improvement in the declining sales of Sunday newspaper titles, even as weekday circulation struggled.

In December, the over­all circulation of Sunday newspapers fell by 0.6% month on month and 11.2% year on year. This was almost half the rate of decline month on month in November, and is a significantly lower rate year on year.

The Sunday Mirror, Sunday Post and Sun­day Mail all increased their sales from No­vember to December in small amounts, but the Daily Star Sunday edition achieved impressive 3.1% growth. All of these titles, along with the Mail on Sunday, achieved lower-than-aver­age declines year on year.

The ABC is the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It’s an independent, industry-owned auditor of the UK media industry which regularly publishes data on newspaper circulation figures.

Reach group circulation director John Howard said December had been a “decent month” for Reach titles. “It’s always a dif­ficult month to predict in terms of sales due to the huge disruption to trad­ing patterns. We should say a huge thank you to all retailers over this period, especial­ly those who turned out on Boxing Day, and, of course, to all those news deliverers.”

Saturday newspaper titles contin­ued to have the lowest rate of decline year on year, but dropped more than twice as much as in the previous month. Publishers excluded most Christmas-to-new-year editions from their figures.

The results follow a difficult period for the sector. Figures for September showed Saturday circulation falling by 1.9% and Sunday circulation by 2% month on month when compared to August. Those figures represented  a substantial increase on the rate of decline relative to the previous month. The month on month decline figures for August compared to July being 0.3% on Saturday, 1% on Sundays, and 0.7% on weekdays.

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