This report examines the fast-changing market for national newspapers, which is struggling to come to terms with a decline in its core product – print newspapers – and rapid growth in their digital audience. The latter is proving harder to monetise as a result of many sites establishing the principle of free access early in their lives, which has proved difficult to shake off once consumers have become accustomed to free news.
Although the market appears to be hurtling headlong towards full conversion to digital, Mintel’s research for this report has identified some resistance to reading news online compared to reading in print, and not just among the more traditional older age groups of consumer that one might expect.
Instead, for now at least, digital is another string in the bow of publishers – albeit one that should not be ignored – and is just one of a number of different platforms through which news is now disseminated.
Mintel last reported on this market in National Newspapers – UK, April 2013. This report examines the factors driving demand for national newspapers, looks at sales trends overall and by segment, assesses market shares, profiles the leading publishers and provides a consumer viewpoint concerning brand perception; it documents readership levels, devices used to access national news online, sites visited online and general attitudes towards national newspapers.
Definition
For the purposes of this report, national newspapers are defined as those newspapers that are circulated throughout the UK. There remains a lack of uniformity among the major monitoring bodies (the Newspaper Society and ABC) as to which titles should be included as nationals and which as regionals, but in most respects this report adheres to ABC practice.
From July 2006, The Sunday Post has been monitored by ABC, so it is now included in this report. For the same reason, the Daily Sport has been included between January 2008 and February 2009 and is excluded after that, while the Sunday Sport is excluded from March 2009. Similarly, The Herald and Sunday Herald were included until June 2012, while The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday were included until January 2012.
The term ‘circulation’ refers to the number of copies of a newspaper that are sold or delivered to consumers. ‘Readership’ refers to the number of consumers who read a newspaper and thus is higher with the addition of pass-on readers.
The report uses the ABC classifications of Popular, Mid-market and Quality throughout.
Currently, as monitored by ABC, the three sectors include the following titles:
Popular: Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Record, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday, Daily Star Sunday, News of the World, Sunday People, Sunday Mail, Sunday Mirror. The News of the World was included in this category prior to its closure in July 2011.
Mid-market: Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Mail on Sunday, Sunday Express, The Sunday Post.
Quality: The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, i, The Times, Independent on Sunday, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times.
Mintel classifies the London Evening Standard as a regional, as does the Newspaper Society, while the Metro titles are also classified as regionals.
Specialist national sports papers such as the Racing Post are excluded.
It is not possible to write about national newspapers without discussing their digital operations, including websites and apps for use on smartphones, tablets and e-readers. While these are excluded from the main market size table in this report (which relates to print edition sales only), data are provided on website visits for the purposes of comparison, and reference is made throughout the report to digital products such as apps since this is where much of the innovation in the market is taking place.
