Sales and online readership of the Spectator power ahead once more
12:48pmThe Spectator magazine has recorded its highest-ever sales. The audited ABC average circulation for the first half of this year was almost 77,000 -- a weekly average of 76,952 to be exact -- the highest ever sale in the magazine's 180-year history and the 12th consecutive half-year increase.
Circulation is now 5% up on the first half of 2007. Of particular importance to advertisers, both ‘paid-for’ elements sales were up over the same period last year, with newsstand sales up 4% and subscriptions up almost 6%. The total ‘actively purchased’ copies in the UK increased by 7.4%.
Spectator magazine sales have continued to grow despite a huge increase in traffic to its website. Spectator.co.uk has consistently grown since it re-launch last autumn: average figures for January-June were 182,000 unique users and 1.5million page impressions --an impressive increase of 138% in unique users and 125% in page impressions on the same period last year.
Online growth has continued into the summer. Google Analytics recorded nearly 198,000 unique users and 1.9 million page impressions for spectator.co.uk.
Andrew Neil, CEO of Press Holdings Media Group, said
“It is both gratifying and mpressive that The Spectator magazine has reached a record 77,000 circulation when its website is powering ahead to almost 200,000 unique users and 2m page impressions a month. To achieve all that at a time of challenging economic circumstances is remarkable and I thank and congratulate the editorial and commercial teams.
The Editor of The Spectator, Matthew d’Ancona added"It looks like we are heading for even more troubled economic times. Our goal is still to reach sales of 80,000. But until market conditions improve we will be content to tread water at around 77,000 and look for further growth in online readership and revenues. Spectator.co.uk shows every sign of being the new crown jewels of our magazine group."
“These figures prove that our editorial strategy for the Spectator is right: we offer the best, most intelligent and wittiest journalism in print and online. The magazine continues to be the voice of authority on all matters of politics and public policy, read by the most discerning audience in the country.
"Spectator.co.uk is now an online powerhouse, especially the Coffee House blog, and has rapidly established itself as a site that you have to visit several times a day to keep abreast of the issues of the day.”
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cityboozer
August 15th, 2008 1:29pm Report this commentAnd yet I'm sorry to say that the magazine isn't as good as it was a few years ago.
I only get it for Fraser Nelson now.
Alexc
August 15th, 2008 3:07pm Report this commentSpectator sales and exposure will grow provided your high standards of journalism are maintained. Only concentration on quality not profit will do justice to the Spectator's legacy. Keep up the good work!
Guy Incognito
August 15th, 2008 3:26pm Report this commentI think it's much better improved since the tawdry media navel-gazing and celeb-obsessions of the dark period after Frank Johnson.
If only you'd drop the banal 'Style and travel' section. If I want advice on clothes, I ask my tailor. And if I want to read press release-driven puffery for meretricious tat, I could seek Grazia or the Sunday Times Style section.
But this thread is an example of the tractor production statistics you condemn elsewhere.
Spritzer
August 15th, 2008 3:56pm Report this commentI have to say the only familiarity I had until recently was with the mag was the Jeffrey Bernard anthologies I read over and over so I've only discovered the site on a daily basis having migrated across as one of Ms Phillips' daily readers. The only connection I can think of between those two characters is that they are probably the two foremost popular experts in their fields, although with all respect to Mr Bernard, Ms Phillips' has maybe somewhat broader interests than his. We gather from her blog that she enjoys the odd trip to the theatre, but she has yet to reveal any regular trips to Soho's Coach & Horses.
Certainly on a weekday I visit at least once a day and have discovered all sorts of other wonderful things to read, Coffee House, Rod Liddle and so on...
Nick
August 15th, 2008 3:59pm Report this commentI agree with Guy Incognito, the Style & Travel section is terrible. Oscar Humphries' pieces, in particular, are pitiful. The quality of the recent diarists, David Tang springs to mind, is also increasingly poor.
Having been an enthusiastic Spectator reader for over twenty years I am finding an increasing number of articles I have no interest in reading. However Fraser Nelson, Charles Moore and Paul Johnson continue to make it a magazine still worth purchasing.
Verity
August 15th, 2008 3:59pm Report this commentThe Speccie went downhill when the attention-deficit Boris Johnson was inexplicably named editor. It didn't just go downhill; it careened off the edge of one's consciousness.
Now it's coming back. It surpasses The Telegraph editorial page in interest, pertinence and wit. (Save three or four good-value columnists in The Torygraph.)
Verity
August 15th, 2008 4:02pm Report this commentSpritzer - Jeffrey Barnard was interested in drinking and betting on the ponies. You're saying this makes him less of a read than Ms Phillips?
William Norton
August 15th, 2008 4:03pm Report this commentSpritzer: following your comparison of her with Jeffrey Bernard the phrase "Melanie Phillips is on holiday" suddenly takes on new connotations....
Guy Incognito
August 15th, 2008 4:09pm Report this commentNick: I assumed David Tang's diary this week was an elaborate in-joke.
Verity
August 15th, 2008 4:14pm Report this commentWilliam Norton - Ha ha ha ha ha!
Spritzer
August 15th, 2008 4:32pm Report this commentOh, I'm not interested in horses and ponies, or cricket or all-nighters in the least, Verity. I meant to say he was an expert in making people laugh. There are very few prose writers I can think of that make me as cheerful as Mr Bernard. He was and to me remains in the top drawer.
I pass the Coach & Horses on the way home and if I see Ms Phillips there, I shall buy her a very big drink and drink to Jeff's good health.
Paulinus
August 15th, 2008 4:55pm Report this commentI see the New Statesperson can manage only a paltry 30,000 copies
*sniggers quietly behind hand*
Max Kaye
August 15th, 2008 6:53pm Report this commentThe Speccie is still a good read - 'essential' in Fraser's overused phrase ;-)
But I'd really like two things:
1) Bring back Mark Steyn
2) get rid of Style & Travel and other 'advertorials'. (Unless, of course, I'm the one sent on an expenses-paid, first class freebie. I happily write the usual sick-making puff-piece).
Verity
August 15th, 2008 7:33pm Report this commentMax Kaye, certainly bringing back Mark Steyn would send circulation figures rocketing up!
Where is everybody? Even for communiting time on a Friday evening, it's awfuly quiet around here. I read that it's a Bank Holiday weekend, so some of you may be off on a course of combat training to face Heathrow.
Frank Pulley
August 15th, 2008 7:38pm Report this commentAuberon Waugh (pbuh) is sorely missed. I won't keep going on about Mark Steyn's departure, but think what your circulation would have been if you hadn't lost him. Paul Johnson is always worth the cover price and Rod Liddle is now compulsive reading. Dominic Lawson's stint was top drawer. Why is he never invited to contrubute to today's melee? It would be good to hear his take on NuToryism.
But all this crowing is about circulation figures is unseemly. Just think Currant Bun and be ashamed.
Fergus Pickering
August 15th, 2008 7:50pm Report this commentNonsense, Verity. The magazine was better under Boris Johnson. More zing, if you know what I mean.
Cogito Ergosum
August 15th, 2008 7:59pm Report this commentGod help us, no! Do NOT bring back Mark Steyn. I regretted that Peter Oborne "wandered off", after backing Ken Clarke for the Tory leadership.
I wonder what Tamzin does on Fridays.
Coffee House would be easier to read if each day were on a single Internet page.
Verity
August 15th, 2008 8:53pm Report this commentNonsense, Fergus Pickering. The mag was completely blah and empty while Boris Johnson was nominally in charge.
Frank Pulley - I have told you this before. Mark Steyn was let go from The Speccie and The Telegraph by the then-new owners, the Barclays.
Mark Steyn is engaged in a big new project now so may not have time to come back.
Fergus Pickering
August 15th, 2008 11:30pm Report this commentI like it blah and empty. I don't like it serious and weighty. It's a magazine, for God's sake. If it wasn't for the great Scruff and Matthew Paris it would hardly be worth looking at. If I want to be bored rigid I can read the Economist.
TGF UKIP
August 15th, 2008 11:31pm Report this commentPredictably, I suppose, I echo the cries for a return of Mark Steyn. If, however, for reasons indicated by Verity he is not available, how's about another genuine transatlantic conservative voice. I would suggest even perhaps a syndicated piece from the "Weekly Standard" but wrong stable, I guess, for Andrew Neil.
On the domestic front,again predictably, I suppose, what about a counter voice! The Speccie is, with justification, seen as the voice of the posh, patrician, paternalistic Tory Left with which its support for Cameron is entirely in keeping.
Perhaps, therefore, the Dear Editor, to at least counteract the accusations of "fanzine," should invite at least regular, if not weekly, contributions from the Right. Janet Daley and Heffer spring immediately to mind but I'm sure there must be other literate hacks equally pissed off with with Dave and Blue Labour.
Verity
August 16th, 2008 4:30am Report this commentTGF - UKIP - I am not Tory Left and nor am I paternalistic. I am red in tooth and claw capitalist and sauve qui peu! I am a Janet Daley conservative and would welcome contributions from her. She's a strong, incisive writer. I'm a fan. I'd love to see her here. Heffer, too.
Nicholas
August 16th, 2008 10:54am Report this commentDavid Tang's piece was oily - and demonstrated the perplexity of feeling national pride for China but slight embarrassment at her totalitarian tendencies. Mr Tang should relax. Herr Braun is taking it as his model for the new Britain with his own Cultural Revolution to be launched at his 189th comeback. Authoritarian capitalism larded with social engineering by the wannabe Khmer Rouge twenty-somethings in governments central or local and veneered with the debate-stifling fascism of Political Correctness. Mr Cameron promises - what? - a slightly more trendy, green, four weddings and a funeral, Notting Hill version of same. Mr Davis, meanwhile, has dropped into obscurity, just as the Orwellian Ministry of Injustice announces yet more laws to put car drivers in jail, closing yet another of those notorious "gaps" in existing law which New Labour has been zealously filling almost as rapidly as their prisons. When New Labour talk about car drivers being "avoidably distracted" you can be sure that they picture white, male, middle-aged drivers with counter-revolutionary conservative (small 'c') tendencies.
But, giving oxygen to Liam Byrne? That is just perverse. More so in the absence of any heavyweight conservative (small 'c') writing in the pages of the big 'S' these days. And heaven forbid that you should invite any members of the the big 'C' Opposition to contribute anything.
I wish I could shout "Stop the bus!" and get off, but even the relief driver Cameron seems determined to complete the New Labour journey to an utterly dreadful New Britain. Of course the longer it goes on the more younger minds take the wheel or grab the road map, ignorant of how it used to be and therefore without qualms in setting course towards a Cromwellian/Orwellian "paradise" where the state sets out a precise agenda for how we should think and act at work and play with all the majesty and sense of a group of kindergarten mothers or the worst type of parish council.
Verity
August 16th, 2008 2:13pm Report this commentNicholas - Bravo!
TGI UKIP, for a genuinely conservative Transatlantic voice, there's Tony Blankley. Also, how about Thomas Sowell - an economist, author, conservative thinker and very readable syndicated columnist.
Frank Pulley
August 16th, 2008 3:10pm Report this commentNicholas
Another seminal contribution and depressingly accurate prognosis.
TGF UKIP
August 16th, 2008 10:02pm Report this commentNicholas, a brilliant, brilliant post! A forensic diagnosis and a real kick up the arse.
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