Sales of The Spectator have risen to a new high in the mag’s 179-year-history – up 4.4 per cent year-on-year to 73,204.
The ABC for first six months of 2006 – released a year later – shows that the mag’s fortunes have not been dented by the Barclay Brothers take-over and the replacement of long-serving editor Boris Johnson with Matthew D’Ancona.
Spectator Publisher and CEO of Press Holdings Andrew Neil said ‘Despite testing market conditions The Spectator success story continues, in terms of increased sales, revenues, profitability and critical esteem. This success is a testament to the hard work, innovations and first-class journalism of Matthew d’Ancona, the Editor, and his team. They are consistently producing an excellent product which has moved with the times but retained all The Spectator’s well-established virtues.”
He said that the plan now is to exceed 75,000 sales in the second half of the year – helped by the relaunch of the website in September, which he said will raise awareness of the brand and so drive subscriptions.
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“This ambition will be helped by the re-launch of The Spectator website in September, which will help build the unique Spectator brand online, increase awareness and drive subscriptions.”
The Business – which switched from newspaper to magazine at the end of this year – had a three-month launch ABC of 43,383.
Neil said: ‘”The challenge now is to increase newsstand sales and fully-paid subscriptions among our target readership so that we move towards our break-even target of a 50,000 circulation as soon as possible.
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‘To that end we have a major programme for the autumn planned to drive up newsstand sales and subscriptions along with a TV and posters above-the-line campaign to increase awareness.”
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