Media - Bill Hagerty finds murky secrets behind massaged circulation figures
When he wrote: "Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true", Arnold Bennett was not referring to those creative masters of sales spin, press circulation departments. But as sure as facts are sacred, he might have been.
Like Frank Carson's jokes, newspaper circulation figures depend on the way you tell 'em and I have commented previously here on the liberal interpretation that can, with expert massaging, turn a plunge into a barrel of pigswill into the flowering of success-scented roses.
So open to manipulation and misrepresentation are bulk sales, discounted copies and subscription schemes at less than full price that the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has decided to beef up its operation. More inspectors and auditors are being recruited; sales figures will be inspected more often. All this is most commendable, but when the dust settles, I shall be surprised if it looks any different from the stuff now swept under the carpet with consummate ease by circulation departments.
A far better guide to the fortunes of those businesses jostling for position on the street of misadventure is the National Readership Survey. As Peter Preston pointed out in the Observer of 8 October, the NRS's breakdown of figures, into the readers' social class, education, gender and age, makes extravagant flimflammery most difficult.
Sometimes NRS reports also shed helpful light on the constant moving and shaking that makes some national newspapers appear as if they were produced on a trampoline. For example, after the Daily Mirror's encouraging circulation performance in recent times, why has the editor, Piers Morgan, found it necessary to make wholesale changes at the top of his news operation?
The paper's ABC-ratified sales for August were slightly up on the previous month; its six-monthly figure down 3.01 per cent on the same period last year. The Sun's year-on-year drop was greater, and although the gap between the two titles over the six months stood at 1,322,687, it had shrunk by more than 50,000 from the year before.
Hardly an achievement that demanded the popping of champagne corks at Canary Wharf, but better than a smack on the head with a rolled-up copy of the Sunday Times. Until, that is, Morgan's eyes fell upon the NRS figures for the same period: March to August this year. These show that the Mirror's readership fell to 5,725,000, a decline of 8.4 per cent year on year, while the Sun lost only 1 per cent of its readers. The gap between the two papers increased to 3,987,000 readers. The popular daily market shrank 3.4 per cent during the period, which means the Sun considerably outperformed its rival while the Mirror stumbled alarmingly. Morgan's rapid reshuffle of Mirror news executives bears the signs of a manoeuvre prompted by a nose bloodied on the battlefield.
Colin Myler, leading the troops over the top at the Mirror's Sunday ally, is another one who is licking wounds. His paper's year-on-year circulation decline for the six-month period was a far from calamitous 2.47 per cent, but the NRS shows a loss of 7.1 per cent of readers, down from 6,252,000 to 5,810,000. The gap between the Sunday Mirror and News International's News of the World has widened by 114,000 to 4,368,000 readers. The overall popular Sunday market decline in the period was 4.28 per cent, so the head of the Trinity Mirror chief executive, Philip Graf, must rest uneasily on his pillow.
But lest it be thought that I am unfairly highlighting the problems of the Mirrors, the NRS report will also have worried the Wapping executive chairman, Les Hinton. The daily quality market declined by 4.9 per cent during the March-August period of this year, yet the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times all recorded an increase in readership. It was the Times, with a lurch downward of 14.8 per cent, that was largely responsible for the overall depression, although the Daily Telegraph's loss of 8.2 per cent made a significant contribution.
The Times's six-monthly average ABC circulation was 718,672 and its year-on-year loss just 1.16 per cent. Yet its readership is a sorry 1,580,000.
The ABC figures for September will be announced in a few days, and I can guarantee a smile will be painted on some of even the gloomiest countenances. No wonder, then, that suggestions for the National Readership Survey to be adopted as the main arbiter of success and failure have been met with much hand-wringing and grinding of teeth in circulation departments throughout the capital.
If it is true that Mohamed Fayed lacks the money to be a serious contender for the Express group, he most certainly does not lack advisers to guide him through the murky waters to proprietorship. Max Clifford and the former News of the World editor Phil Hall are current consultants, while Brian Hitchen, one-time pilot of the Daily Star and then the Sunday Express, can still be found lurking on occasion in the corridors of Knightsbridge. Hitchen's son, Alexander, is Al Fayed's press secretary.
They follow in illustrious footsteps: the former Express executive editor Alan Frame; Mike Molloy, an editor of the Daily Mirror for ten years; the ex-Mail on Sunday editor Stewart Steven; Peter McKay, now quite often vociferous about Al Fayed in his Mail column; and - of course - Andrew Neil. Why, even I took the Fayed shilling - briefly, in 1996 - to work on the dummy of a proposed new Sunday newspaper, although, alas, I never met the head Harrodian.
Names of others who have served with the Fayed fire brigade, some perhaps too bashful to proclaim the fact, will be welcomed.
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