Bur­ied in the Office of Fair Trading’s report National News­pa­pers: A review of under­tak­ings relat­ing to the sup­ply of national news­pa­pers in Eng­land and Wales are some inter­est­ing nuggets.

It con­firms:

• a mod­est recent decline in over­all retail out­lets (prob reflect­ing small news­agents going under)
• the shift from inde­pend­ent news­agents to mul­tiples (e.g. supermarkets/filling sta­tions). Newsagent’s share of sales down from 84% in 1983 to 42% in 2007
• the import­ance of mul­tiples, espe­cially at weekends
• home deliv­ery down from 40–45% in 1993 to 25% in 2007

My favour­ite reminder was this:

70 per­cent of news­pa­per sales are made by 10am.

Maybe earlier trips to the super­mar­ket would sell more papers…