Guardian suffers readership decline

by John Reynolds, Media Week 14-Feb-08, 16:07

LONDON - The Guardian has suffered the biggest year-on-year drop in readership numbers across national daily titles between 2006 and 2007, according to NRS figures.

The Guardian Media Group-owned daily paper was read by an average of 1,121,000 people between January and December 2007, down 10 per cent from the previous year.

According to the NRS, its sister paper The Observer dropped by the same percentage over the period, while all the other national Sunday titles suffered a fall, except the News International-owned News of the World, which remained static.

lsewhere within the Sunday sector, the Sunday Mirror was up by 1 per cent and The Mail on Sunday, which has recently been relaunched, fell by 5 per cent to 5,775,000.

These figures are contrary to January's ABC newspaper figures, which show The Mail on Sunday's year-on-year circulation was on the up.

Across the daily market, the Financial Times was among the biggest fallers, dropping by 8 per cent. Red-top titles The Sun and Daily Star saw readership increases, while the Daily Mirror remained flat.

The NRS data also reveals that more people read Associated Newspapers’ free evening title The London Lite, than its paid-for stablemate, the Evening Standard, or News International-owned thelondonpaper.