How sales leapt for a huge story when it was least expected

Circulation rises were an unusual feature of the end of the year. Now it's a question of what newspapers' evolving formats can do

The two worst times of the year for newspaper sales are high summer and Christmas. Readers are on holiday, often abroad, and their minds are on things other than news. The same is true of the news makers, like politicians and the City. Even the celebrities seem to take a break from celebrity. Crime goes on; journalism goes on, but usually with the B-team on duty. Otherwise we are left with entertainment and sport.

The two worst times of the year for newspaper sales are high summer and Christmas. Readers are on holiday, often abroad, and their minds are on things other than news. The same is true of the news makers, like politicians and the City. Even the celebrities seem to take a break from celebrity. Crime goes on; journalism goes on, but usually with the B-team on duty. Otherwise we are left with entertainment and sport.

So in normal times we should put health warnings over the December circulation figures. There is no point paying much attention to the comparison with the previous month, because everybody does worse in December. You see it with the television news over the ever longer holiday period. Half an hour becomes 15 minutes, and regular slots become shorter slots between the movies.

A huge story can alter things, and this Christmas there was the tsunami. It happened on Boxing Day, and the coverage quickly became huge, with papers giving as much as 10 pages to the disaster. The audited circulation figures we publish each month are an average of all the publication days, so the tsunami effect applied to only seven days (the audit period went up to Sunday 2 January).

In this time, when circulations are traditionally the lowest of the year, everybody put on sale. Industry estimates suggest that in the quality sector aggregate sales of the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent were up by an average of about 60,000 copies a day over the week, with the Bank Holiday Monday - 27 December, the day after the tsunami - showing a lift of some 85,000. The four broadsheets put on between 15,000 and 25,000 each.

At the end of the week the Sunday broadsheets of 2 January produced some superb and dramatic narratives and did even better, selling an estimated additional 150,000 copies between them.

The broadcasters report significantly higher viewing figures for news of the tsunami. Public interest, as demonstrated by the amount of money donated to the various appeals, was great. The media, print and broadcast, responded. Or did the coverage provoke the sympathy that led to the public generosity? A bit of both I suspect. Channel 4 News reckoned their audiences were up around 40 per cent in those early days of the tragedy, i.e. between Christmas and the New Year weekend. The BBC's 10pm news on the Tuesday, two days after wave struck, was put at eight million, compared with a 2004 average audience of 4.5 million. ITV's biggest audience was the following night and was put at over seven million. Both Sky News and BBC News 24 had audiences more than double their averages over the year.

Looking at newspaper sales for 2005 generally, in most areas the sales trend is down. Taking the figures over the six months from July to December, as compared with the same period of 2003, we find that that every paper is down, apart from The Independent (up 15 per cent) and The Times (up 4.3 per cent). The Mirror has suffered worst with a fall of 8.4 per cent, followed by The Sun, down 4.4 per cent. The decline of the two best-selling dailies, the red-top tabloids, is spectacular and serious for them. It is a predicament to watch in the coming year.

The picture is the same on Sunday, where the greatest sales loss has been suffered by The People, now below a million and sinking 9 per cent over the year. The Independent on Sunday is steady, as is The Mail on Sunday. Only the Sunday Express posted a significant increase: 4.3 per cent.

We start the new year where we started the last, looking not only at red-top decline but at the compact effect on the quality market. The Independent and The Times are now established in their new size, and the two remaining broadsheets are going through tough times. The Telegraph, the market leader for so many years, trails The Times on full price sales. And The Guardian is experiencing its worst sales period for a long time, down nearly 4 per cent on the six-monthly figures.

All eyes will be on the next moves to smaller format. How long before The Independent on Sunday joins its daily stablemate as a compact? The Guardian and Observer will go to the Berliner size (bigger than compact, smaller than broadsheet) just as soon as their new presses are installed and running. This has been assumed to be 2006, but the Guardian Media Group will be doing everything it can to advance that date.

And the Telegraph? I was on a radio programme with its editor, Martin Newland, the other day, and while he avoided a direct answer to the "will they, won't they?" question, his denial that the Telegraph would go compact was far from convincing. Will the national broadsheet (excluding the specialist Financial Times) be dead by the end of the year? The odds are shortening all the time.

Germaine's a page-one stunna for 'qualities'

Dumbing down debate, episode 287. Last Wednesday provided a defining moment for the so-called quality press, when they united in editorial judgement to give Celebrity Big Brother coverage, of which the popular papers would not have been ashamed. The papers which have so often taken a lofty view about unreality shows on television, or ignored them, provided copious coverage of Germaine Greer's voluntary exit from the Big Brother house. The story dominated the front page of The Daily Telegraph, taking up about half the editorial space with a huge picture and "story". And there was a half-page feature inside. The Guardian gave it a third of page two, with a large picture. The Independent gave Germaine all the editorial space on page three, The Times all the editorial space on page seven. The justification, I understand, is Greer. She is an upmarket celeb and thus worthy of the attention Jordan did not get in the qualities. One can imagine the tortured editorial conferences of the future where the debate centres on the social and intellectual status of various participants in tacky TV shows.

Peter Cole is Professor of Journalism at the University of Sheffield