BRITISH NEWSPAPER SALES

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5283, 20 December 1946, Page 3

BRITISH NEWSPAPER SALES

SUCSTANTIAL INCREASlFi IN DAILY CIRCUL AT ION . LONDON. ■Circulation of Britain's national daily newspa(p?er!s jum'ped approximately 1,500,000 copies in the first week of unrestricted post-war saies, the weekly New Statesman and Nation reported. Surveying the newspaper circulation campaign on which new newsprint quotas wil be determined early next year, the magazine concluded that unleashing the press had proved the existence of "a general and previously unsatisfied public demand" for more morning newspapers, but questioned the use to which the papers were putting their additional pages. The dailies now are being allowed sufficient paper to increase their fourpage editions to six pages three days a week and to sell as many papers as the market will take on order. The New Statesman and Nation said that at the close of the first week saies of. Londop. papers jumped . from 13,500,000 to nearly 15,000,000 copies daily witho'Ut any reported loss of rea'ders for the provincial press. Analysing contents of the larger paper, the magazine said the additional pages had heen devoted to features more than news and that sports news had been given priority over "news of more serious import." "The mass circulation papers," it 1 commented, "will have to do better if the claims of newspaper imports are to •;have priority over food and other 'e s|'entiaR faw ■ -m ater i al s in competition "for Britain's limited supplies of

foreign exchahge." The largest increase, the report saidj went to the picture tablo'd Daily Mirror with a jump from 2,400,000to 2,-900,000. Next was ranked the Daily Express, v/ith an increase of 330,000 on its previous saies of 3,500,000. • .Increases ranging between 120,000 and 150,000 were credited to other niembers of the "Big Five," the Daily Mail, the Daily Herald and the News Chronicle. The Communist Daily Worker was reported to have scored a .4 per cent. gain. The Times of London, independent, gained 20 per cent., the magazine said. The eonservative Daily Telegraph * gained 170,00 readers, it sai'd, to reach the 1,000,000 mark.