'Philly Inquirer' Takes ABC Hit on Sunday Circulation

By: Jennifer Saba The Philadelphia Inquirer had its Sunday circulation knocked down by 17,209 copies and its average daily circulation by 211 copies according to an Audit Bureau of Circulations publisher's statement.

These are adjustments in the circulation numbers the paper reported on the ABC FAS-FAX report in September 2007.

For the six months ending September 2007, the paper revised its Sunday circulation from 662,304 to 645,095 -- a decline of 2.6%. Its daily (Monday-Friday) circulation went from 338,260 to 338,049, a nominal difference.

Both the FAS-FAX and the publisher's statements come out twice a year and mirror the same six-month period. The FAS-FAX is round-up of top line data from all the publisher's statements.

In theory, circulation data on the FAS-FAX should closely, if not exactly, match the numbers filed on the publisher's statement. There are deviations but generally they are small, even a handful of copies.

For a paper to be off by several thousand copies is unusual.

This is not the first time the Inquirer revised its circulation. On its audit report, which covered the 53 weeks ending April 2007, ABC noted a difference among the numbers filed on the publisher's statements and the audit report. For that period, ABC cut 15,718 copies from the Inquirer's Sunday circulation and by 392 copies from its average daily circulation (Monday-Friday).

Jay Devine, a spokesman for the Inquirer, said the audit adjustment was due to circulation that fell under the other-paid category. "ABC was not able to verify certain subscribers that were part of a third-party circulation program," he said.

That same third-party program spilled into the September 2007 publisher statement period, explained Devine, which accounted for a chunk of the 17,209 copies, or almost 12,000 copies. The other adjustments come out of the discounted circulation and the more -than-50% paid category.

Publishers do not have to get prior approval from ABC to run third-party sponsorships. However, ABC does require that papers give auditors notice at least 14 days in advance of new programs.

ABC said it does not comment on the specifics of audit findings.

While the Inquirer made the revision to the audit report and publisher's statement it did so within the acceptable range of variance.

Newspapers with discrepancies of 3% or more when comparing the audit report to the publisher's statements are listed on an ABC variation report. (ABC recently bumped up that threshold from 2%). A difference of 5% or more triggers the board to look into the possibility of censure or other measures.

The adjustments hardly affect the Inquirer's daily circulation or its claim that now "pigs fly." Even with the new numbers daily grew 2.3%. On Sunday circulation fell 5.4% opposed to the originally reported decline of 2.9%.