Friday, January 14, 2011

Deeper and Down

Can anyone honestly say this comes as a big surprise?

Sales of the Daily Record have fallen below 300,000 for the first time, according to figures for December.

Circulation across the whole Scottish market declined in 2010, with national daily titles seeing an average drop in sales of 6%, while Sundays dropped 7%.

Among the titles to experience the biggest decline were the Scotsman, down 8%, and the Herald which fell by 7%.

The News of the World also saw its circulation fall by 37,000 to 261,000 during the year.


As an Aberdeen-supporting SNP voter, the future of an Old Firm obsessed Labour propaganda rag like Record matters not one bit to me. As for the Herald and the Scotsman, it's clear that with the declining quality of the bits in between the adverts, their proprietors are reaping in abundance what they have sown.


It's food for thought that despite the febrile near daily monstering the SNP has taken from all these titles over the past four years, independence support sits at 40%. Meanwhile, the party can still poll nearly 15 times higher than the Scotsman's daily circulation and well over double that of the Sun and the Record.

If *only* there was a way for all those clever newspaper executives to shore up their failing businesses, perhaps by enhancing the appeal of their titles to those who might inherently be inclined to try and buy Scottish wherever possible... any suggestions?

1 comment:

Doug Daniel said...

The Old Firm comment reminded me of something I saw on Reporting Scotland this week that left me absolutely flabbergasted. They had a story about Celtic and Rangers being drawn against each other in the Scottish Cup draw (I'm not sure why it was "news" - they play each other 5 or 6 times every season), and had people going on about how it left the path open for all the other teams to at least get to the final (it would be patronising if it wasn't completely true). Then they went back to the studio, and moved onto the weather.

Not a single word about any of the other teams. It was as if the other teams didn't exist. I was sitting there thinking "so who did Aberdeen get?" and I dare say fans of other teams were thinking the same thing.

BBC Scotland - and Reporting Scotland in particular - just gets worse and worse. Absolute amateurs. If we do ever get a Scottish Six news, I dearly hope none of the current Reporting Scotland team are involved.