Newspaper circulation: Bukedde, New Vision make gains in Q1 as Monitor drops

Vision Group titles performed well in the first quarter, picking up subscribers, while Daily Monitor continued to shed them, data from South Africa’s Audit Bureau of Circulations shows.

Bukedde, the Luganda language daily published by the Vision Group, increased subscribers for the third consecutive quarter. Its average daily sales in the first three months of this year came to 29,757, an improvement of 19.3% from the previous quarter.

In the and third and fourth quarters of 2016, Bukedde was the only title among the three papers to increase circulation. This followed a reduction in its cover price in September 2016, after an increase in July 2015 led to a decline in sales and loss of its top spot as Uganda’s best selling newspaper.

Bukedde also overtook New Vision for the first time since the third quarter of 2015. New Vision’s circulation in quarter one was 29,200. Still, this was an improvement from the previous period, with subscribers growing by 8.4%. The increase also ended a declining trend recorded in the two previous quarters.

Nation Media Group’s Daily Monitor is still losing subscribers, however. Circulation in the first quarter was 1.9% less than the previous period at 18,003 copies, the fourth consecutive quarter it is dropping.

New Vision and Bukedde are published by New Vision Printing and Publishing Company Ltd (NVL), which is listed on the Uganda Securities Exchange. Daily Monitor is published by the Nation Media Group, which is listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and also cross-listed on the USE.

For the weekend editions, both Sunday Monitor and Sunday Vision saw their circulation decline by small margins. Sunday Monitor’s circulation fell 0.3% to 11,834, as Sunday Vision declined to 17,201, 1.3% less than in the previous quarter. Bukedde does not submit weekend titles.