Media agencies are pushing for compensation from Trinity Mirror
after the news last week that circulation figures for three of its
Birmingham newspapers have been overstated for the past six years.
Trinity Mirror discovered that Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for
the Birmingham Evening Mail and the Sunday Mercury were systematically
overstated by 17 per cent, and those for The Birmingham Post by 10 per
cent, during the past six years. Circulation figures for all three
titles have been withdrawn from the ABC while an investigation is
undertaken.
The company is offering to freeze ad rates for all three titles until
January 2002 and reduce the cost of all ads that are booked through the
newspapers by 10 per cent during 2000. It has also set aside pounds 20
million for advertisers claiming compensation.
One agency media head estimated that the potential advertising revenue
lost through the over-inflated figures amounts to nearly pounds 17
million, based on the total advertising revenue for those newspapers
between October 1994 and September 1999. Agencies said they would push
for retrospective compensation over this issue.
Steve Goodman, head of press at MediaCom TMB, said: ’It makes you wonder
whether there is more than meets the eye with other publications
suffering the same vagaries of this reporting. How much faith can you
put in to ABC figures if it has gone for so long unreported?’
Julie Ferguson, the ABC’s director of newspapers and consumer magazines,
said that the circulation body had sent a team to investigate the
newspapers’ auditing of its copies and hoped to have a report within the
next fortnight.
She added: ’I don’t think that there is any doubt over the credibility
of ABCs.’
