July, a popular month for souvenir newspapers following the birth of Prince George and Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win, brought the biggest audience increases for the national Sunday quality market, which recorded a circulation of 1.6m, a month-on-month boost of 1.82%. 

Only the national morning mid market newspaper segment, which comprises the Daily Express and Daily Mail, reported an overall decrease in readership during what was an historic month for the UK. 

The 6% drop in circulation revenue recently reported by Daily Mail owner DMGT was reflected in the title’s 1.4% distribution decrease – it was one of only four daily newspapers to report a decline in circulation during the month, and suffered the second largest decrease after the Financial Times which lost 5.3% of its audience.

Weekend sister title The Mail on Sunday recorded the largest drop amongst Sunday newspapers (1%), and was one of only two to fall in circulation along with the Sunday Post.

Year-on-year comparisons revealed that every newspaper except i experienced continued circulation decline in the six months between February and July. Annual comparisons showed that national Sunday popular newspapers dropped 17% of its audience since July 2012, with the Daily Star Sunday losing nearly a third of its readers.

i kept its place as the only national newspaper to gain readership year-on-year (11.1%) while sister title The Independent experienced the biggest fall in circulation out of all dailies (22%).

Over the six-month period, Sunday titles lost a bigger share of their audience year-on-year (13%) than the dailies (8.3%).