24 December 2021

SUNDAY PEOPLE DROPS BELOW 100K AND CITY AM RETURNS

The first ABC figures for London freesheet City AM since it returned to print in September show distribution is down 9% since February 2020.

In November the Sunday People’s circulation dropped by 21% to 99,915 – the first time since ABC records began in 2000 that its average circulation was below 100,000.

City AM distributed an average of 77,959 copies each weekday between 8 and 28 November, compared to 85,738 in February 2020.

According to the newspaper’s ABC certificate it has hugely boosted its number of distribution points from 913 in February 2020 to 3,632. The business paper struck a deal to be found in all WeWork’s London locations and new offices, and went further out into the commuter belt to compensate for changing travel patterns as many City workers stuck with flexible working.

Average pagination has gone from 28 in February 2020 to 26, with editorial content up from 70% to 72%.

Nationally-published free newspaper Metro, which continued distributing throughout the pandemic, remains 25% down on its February 2020 distribution level with 1.05m.

The Evening Standard, which like City AM is only distributed in London, is 44% down on its February 2020 level with a distribution of 439,445.

The only newspapers to record year-on-year growth in November were Metro and the Financial Times, which both grew by 37%. The FT’s newsstand sales were down by a quarter but subscriptions and bulk copies distributed for free were both up.