ABC investigates magazine data leak

by Ben Bold, Media Week 13-Aug-07, 12:15

LONDON - The Audit Bureau of Circulations has launched an investigation into how magazine circulation data became publicly available a week before it was due for official release.

The organisation's chief executive Chris Boyd told Media Week that he was "devastated" on hearing the news last Friday, when the technical glitch became apparent, but stressed that this was the first time it had ever happened and was "deeply apologetic" about the incident.

He added that he has spoken to publishers, who had been "supportive", and was confident that they will not break this Thursday's embargo and leak circulations.

"We've got to work out what happened," Boyd said, adding that, "technically what happened can't happen again. We are confident that publishers will keep their embargo."

The error was discovered by a Media Guardian journalist on Thursday, who was conducting some pre-ABCs research on magazine circulations via the ABC website and accidentally struck gold. After keying in individual titles and obtaining their figures, the journalist notified the ABC, which rapidly patched up the leak.

The unofficial, unapproved figures revealed that IPC's new women's weekly Look sold 318,000 copies a week in its first five months on newsstands. Less impressively, the publisher's Loaded is trailing behind Conde Nast's GQ, selling 120,492 copies a month - about 7,000 copies less than GQ. Of the men's monthlies, FHM remains market leader, though it dropped from 371,263 in the last six months of 2006 to 311,590 in the first half of 2007.

Elsewhere, Emap's Grazia is expected to reveal year-on-year rises of up to 20%, and Closer is expected to record a fall.
The ABC issued an official statement regarding the data blunder: "Some unverified circulation data from the forthcoming ABC magazine CCR, covering the period January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2007, was uploaded onto the ABC website this afternoon for a short period of time. These figures are not yet confirmed and approved by ABC and remain subject to change until midday next Thursday, August 16, 2007, when they are due for official release. ABC apologises for any confusion this may cause."