Newspaper circulation tumbles when Murdoch sells front cover

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Vancouver newspapers are sometimes entirely covered in advertising wraps, which replace the front page

      The trend started with the commuter papers and eventually spread to the metropolitan dailies.

      Now, there's word from England that these cover wraps—when combined with a price rise—can have a profoundly negative impact on circulation.

      The Guardian has reported that Rupert Murdoch's flagship tabloid The Sun suffered a loss of 135,000 sales on the first day it tried selling the entire front page to an advertiser.

      The 5.3-percent drop in circulation occurred when BSkyB bought a wrap. It came in the same week that Murdoch jacked up the price by 10 pence.

      Here in Vancouver, local publishers don't release detailed daily circulation figures, so we'll never know how much damage is caused to advertisers inside the paper when the front page is sold to a big bank like ING, a coffee company like Blenz, or a Crown corporation like B.C. Hydro.


      Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      Eustace Scrubb

      Sep 24, 2012 at 5:49pm

      The Province and The Sun need to start doing this more often if it will hopefully speed up their demise. Ideally this could happen at the same time as the electorate put an end to Canwest Global's beloved BCLiberals.

      Andy C.

      Sep 25, 2012 at 6:13am

      A wrap would definitely improve the editorial quality of the Province and the Sun. Maybe they could merge them and call it Peter Brown's Tard and Liar. I'd pay over $100 for each copy.

      Holy Moley

      Sep 25, 2012 at 11:19am

      @Eustace Scrubb, I'm not a bright or smart or know much about current affairs (I do know though that Christy Clark & Stephen Harper are messengers of Satin) but I thought Globel was owned or part of Shaw Communications & has nothing to do with Canwest,can someone in the know clarify if this is true or not.