ABCs: Only Daily Star Sunday escapes December fall in UK newspaper sales

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Almost all UK newspapers suffered a drop in circulation in December, with only the Daily Star Sunday escaping the decline.

According to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Sunday tabloid increased its daily circulation on the previous month's figures by 1.6 per cent. Every other audited title recorded a decline, with the Guardian, Observer, Times, Daily Telegraph and Scotland on Sunday all suffering drops of more than 10 per cent on the same month in 2009.

The biggest monthly decline was recorded by Scotland on Sunday, which suffered a 12.73 per cent drop despite recording the highest increase for the same measure in November.

Overall, morning papers experienced the biggest monthly decline, falling 4.31 per cent on average, compared to 3.25 per cent for Sunday titles.

Year-on-year declines continued for every audited paper in the report.

Key figures

The first figure in each category below denotes average net circulation for December 2010. The figure in brackets is the month-on-month percentage change for the average net circulation between November and December and the third figure shows the year-on-year percentage change between December 2009 and December 2010.

Morning papers:

Popular: 4,854,302 (-5.47) -6.43

Mid Market: 2,654,657 (-3.14) -4.88

Quality: 2,002,726 (-2.95) -

Total average: 9,511,685 (-4.31) -6.68

Sunday papers:

Popular: 4,824,185 (-3.97) -6.83

Mid Market: 2,806,109 (-1.66) -4.09

Quality: 2,038,690 (-3.70) -9

Total average: 9,668,984 (-3.25) -6.53