What is your local paper circulation?
Discussion
If you go to https://www.abc.org.uk/product?search=birmingham+m... and type in a publication in the top right it will show you.
Birmingham Mail which was HUGE back in the day ... a circulation of just 5,074 !
I am a bit shocked by that.
What is yours like?
Birmingham Mail which was HUGE back in the day ... a circulation of just 5,074 !
I am a bit shocked by that.
What is yours like?
Probably because like many newspapers, local or national, 'if you want to read them' they're virtually all accessible 'online' today.
The ones who buy do so invariably because they just want to hold something 'physical'. Not look at a 'screen'.
Birmingham has a population of something like 1.5 Million, I believe.
5,000 copies daily average of the Brum Mail are sold.
My small town has a population of roughly 27,000. But the local rag (weekly) manages to sell 2,000 'physical' copies. It's online as well.
And no, I don't buy the 'physical' copy of our local rag.
That has to be pretty damn good compared to Brum Mail. But the Brum Mail paper is a 'daily' not 'weekly like ours.
And not forgetting, there is also the Birmingham 'Post' as well.
Good god!
Birmingham Post - Circulation is just 844. How's it keep going?
That makes my town's paper pretty damn good.
I did my apprenticeship at the printers who published our local rag back in the 60s. Have no idea what the circulation was back then but it was really good considering population (about a third of what it is today). Different times.
Doesn't work with everything though, for example, yep, you can read 'books' online too, on your mobile, Kindle etc.
The majority though still, even to this day, remain loyal with the 'physical' book.
Odd, because 'experts' predicted in the late 80s that the end of the 'physical' book was 'imminent'.
I ignored their predictions and spent roughly 35 yrs in business as a 'physical' book publisher. In simple terms: they were wrong.
That's the problem with 'experts', many of them are 'so-called experts', ie: not 'real experts'. Today, the world if brimming to overflow with 'so-called experts', as you I'm sure will have noted (if you haven't, hard luck!).
The ones who buy do so invariably because they just want to hold something 'physical'. Not look at a 'screen'.
Birmingham has a population of something like 1.5 Million, I believe.
5,000 copies daily average of the Brum Mail are sold.
My small town has a population of roughly 27,000. But the local rag (weekly) manages to sell 2,000 'physical' copies. It's online as well.
And no, I don't buy the 'physical' copy of our local rag.
That has to be pretty damn good compared to Brum Mail. But the Brum Mail paper is a 'daily' not 'weekly like ours.
And not forgetting, there is also the Birmingham 'Post' as well.
Good god!
Birmingham Post - Circulation is just 844. How's it keep going?
That makes my town's paper pretty damn good.
I did my apprenticeship at the printers who published our local rag back in the 60s. Have no idea what the circulation was back then but it was really good considering population (about a third of what it is today). Different times.
Doesn't work with everything though, for example, yep, you can read 'books' online too, on your mobile, Kindle etc.
The majority though still, even to this day, remain loyal with the 'physical' book.
Odd, because 'experts' predicted in the late 80s that the end of the 'physical' book was 'imminent'.
I ignored their predictions and spent roughly 35 yrs in business as a 'physical' book publisher. In simple terms: they were wrong.
That's the problem with 'experts', many of them are 'so-called experts', ie: not 'real experts'. Today, the world if brimming to overflow with 'so-called experts', as you I'm sure will have noted (if you haven't, hard luck!).
The whole industry is fading away sadly. My company used to manage many south-east free newspaper titles (Hunts Post, Yarmouth Advertiser, Dunmow Broadcast were a few), at it's height it was tens of thousands of copies every week, including printing, transport, storage etc.
Faded slowly over time but the last few years it really nose-dived (I became the person who dealt with it, mapped it all within our GIS system and produced all the bits to make it work so saw it die) and they tried many things to keep it going, but the funding just dried up, and it all went last November. Was a shame (mostly as I'd got it all streamlined and lovely from our end by this time, including many late nights trying to do a good job for the client, who was really just clutching at straws to keep it alive in hindsight). Still got all the datasets archived just in case, although the PAF has changed so much since then it would need setting up fresh anyway.
Locally our free papers died years ago, the bucks free press I remember going many years ago as a free delivery, my local town paper went the same way 18 months ago too.
Faded slowly over time but the last few years it really nose-dived (I became the person who dealt with it, mapped it all within our GIS system and produced all the bits to make it work so saw it die) and they tried many things to keep it going, but the funding just dried up, and it all went last November. Was a shame (mostly as I'd got it all streamlined and lovely from our end by this time, including many late nights trying to do a good job for the client, who was really just clutching at straws to keep it alive in hindsight). Still got all the datasets archived just in case, although the PAF has changed so much since then it would need setting up fresh anyway.
Locally our free papers died years ago, the bucks free press I remember going many years ago as a free delivery, my local town paper went the same way 18 months ago too.
Manchester Evening News 7315, the real laugh is it's not even an afternoon paper now. Printed and sent out with the early morning dailies!
As an es Manchester Victoria train driver I well remember the frenzied activity on platform 11 from about 9pm every evening as the lorries raced up the platform to delivery the bundles to the various trains. These were then sorted and bundled on board for the agents to pickup at certain stations. There were about 30 trains a day from Vic (includes the return empties).
As an es Manchester Victoria train driver I well remember the frenzied activity on platform 11 from about 9pm every evening as the lorries raced up the platform to delivery the bundles to the various trains. These were then sorted and bundled on board for the agents to pickup at certain stations. There were about 30 trains a day from Vic (includes the return empties).
We get 3 different free local village small format monthly magazines through the postbox. I have zero interest in any of the articles so called their HQ to put a stop to it. They said it's impossible to opt out as their distribution people are instructed to put them through every letterbox & they wouldn't be able to afford an address database etc. In the bin they go, month after month. Complete waste of time, money & paper. I don't actually know anyone who reads them
okgo said:
Metro and Evening standard both have pretty small runs these days. Well under 1 million, and they’re free!
Image come out odd, but click on it and you’ll see the trend.
I worked at a national paper 12 years ago. Circulation is half today what it was then.
You’ve been around haven’t you okgo? You seem to have a good grip on a number of topics as a result though.Image come out odd, but click on it and you’ll see the trend.
I worked at a national paper 12 years ago. Circulation is half today what it was then.
Wow, very interesting link The print local media business has about as much future as Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party!
When I lived in Bath, up to about 20 years ago there were 3 local papers. The Bath Advertiser (freebie), The Bath Star (freebie) and the Bath Chronicle(paid for, daily). For a time I worked for the newspaper group Easter Counties Newspapers (now dissolved!) who published The Advertiser. I had two/three friends / acquaintances who worked full time for the 'Chronic' in 1) sales & 2) graphic design
The Bath (Evening) Chronicle was the 'big' local paper - daily (Mon to Sat). It was really popular particularly Thursday (jobs) & Friday (property/cars)
Online advertising has just about put paid to all of them. The Star and the Advertiser disappeared years ago - the circulation of the 'Chronic' is listed as being just 2852 copies - 2374 paid for single issues and 478 paid for subscriptions
https://www.abc.org.uk/Certificates/50811207.pdf
Under 3000 copies per week. Dead!
valiant said:
Pity really but their online offerings are terrible in the extreme.
Can barely navigate our local paper’s website what with endless adverts, pop ups, auto play videos, etc that you just give up. Really horrible to use.
Yeah, they're trying to recover their losses by burying their sites in ads but they make the websites utterly unusable so it's counter-productive. It feels like somebody sold them all the same product, promising them huge ad returns, and it's failed massively. Despite adblockers, I'm still reluctant to visit them.Can barely navigate our local paper’s website what with endless adverts, pop ups, auto play videos, etc that you just give up. Really horrible to use.
Loads of UK stories that made a real difference to people began in the local papers. It gets reported locally and then gets picked up by the nationals. If we surrender our local news to algorithms written by massive US tech companies, that's not a good thing.
valiant said:
Pity really but their online offerings are terrible in the extreme.
Can barely navigate our local paper’s website what with endless adverts, pop ups, auto play videos, etc that you just give up. Really horrible to use.
News aggregator sites (Google news, etc.) and Facebook have pretty much killed off any money the local news sites can make - click an article via Google News and it takes you to the page but strips out all of the ads and replaces it with Google's ads so the news site will make no money out of people reading from there. It's a similar story with Facebook so the issue is soon going to be who is actually going to write the articles?Can barely navigate our local paper’s website what with endless adverts, pop ups, auto play videos, etc that you just give up. Really horrible to use.
A quick Google says there was a review back in 2018 looking into it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43106436
Can't find a resolution to it though
And a longer article about the same situation in the United States where hedge funds are buying newspapers and running them into the ground:
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046952430/the-cons...
durbster said:
Loads of UK stories that made a real difference to people began in the local papers. It gets reported locally and then gets picked up by the nationals. If we surrender our local news to algorithms written by massive US tech companies, that's not a good thing.
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