Trinity Mirror said that the price-cutting strategy for the Daily Mirror had been successful in reversing a year-on-year circulation decline.
The Daily Mirror fought a month-long price war with The Sun in an effort to introduce readers to the new-look Mirror, which has dropped its red-top look in an effort to appeal to a wider audience.
The group said that during the first four months of the year, the ABC sale of the Daily Mirror declined 2.4% year on year. In May, following the brand relaunch and introduction of cover price discounting, the Mirror's ABC sale was only 0.5% down year-on-year.
In an interview, Trinity Mirror chief executive Philip Graf said: "Over the past nine months, we have made enormous changes to the newspaper and over the last two or three months further changes to the paper. We are very pleased indeed with that. And we are now also pleased with the very early results of the price strategy. I do stress the fact these are very early days in terms of this whole strategy, because it is not designed to produce instant results. Again, we stress very clearly and quite often to people that this is about a long-term strategy and we don't expect to see significant results until next year and the following year."
The news was not so good at the two national Sunday titles. During the first five months of 2002, the ABC sale of the Sunday Mirror declined by 2.5% and the Sunday People by 5.1%.
While the national titles suffered, there was better news from Trinity's regional business, confirming the view that the regional newspaper market is holding up well against the downturn.
However, Trinity Mirror said there has been a clear difference in the ad market in the South East and London, which has seen significant decline throughout, and the rest of the UK, where market conditions have been tough but considerably stronger than the South East.
Advertising revenue decline across the regional newspapers for the 26-week period is expected to be 2.3% year on year, with a decline of 11.6% in the South East/London offset by growth of 1.7% across the rest of the division.
In Scotland, Trinity Mirror said that it was expecting an ad revenue decline of 2% for the six-month period, primarily reflecting the success of the business's ad strategy and a robust local advertising market.
Recruitment advertising revenue is estimated to have declined 5.1%, although the South East/London fell 21.7%. The advertising revenue of the three Metro titles for the 26 weeks is expected to increase by 7.9% year on year.
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