Beano Sales Are Up and Dandy Sales Are Steady

The Audit Bureau Of Circulations, the industry body for media measurement, have released the July to December 2011 sales figures for UK consumer magazines which include British comics. After rather a lot of doom and gloom six months ago when the sales figures for The Dandy in particular appeared to have collapsed, things have steadied for The Dandy while The Beano sales have increased.

Before blinding you with the numbers we should say that the ABC headline sales figures are the average sales for a title over the six month period and include both newsstand and subscription sales for the UK, Eire and other countries.

The Beano headline figures in the last half of 2011 are up by 3% on the previous period to 38333 average sales per issue with the subscriptions included in those numbers up by 10%.

After the shocking drop between the last half of 2010 and the first half of 2011, the headline figure for The Dandy in the last half of 2011 was 7489 average sales per issue, which is still a frighteningly low number but is actually a rise of 0.5% on the previous six month period. While this means that more people subscribe to The Beano by post than buy The Dandy from all the shops in the UK and Eire combined, it is interesting that subscriptions for The Dandy are actually up by 50% on the previous period.

The monthly BeanoMAX headline figures are down 9.6% to 22094 with its subscriptions down by4.6%. The interesting statistic that can be teased out of the BeanoMAX figures is that in other countries, ie outside of the UK and Eire, shop sales of BeanoMAX are almost the same as the shop sales for The Beano and The Dandy combined.

Egmont's TOXIC comic magazine has seen an uplift in sales from 40,503 to 41,521 for the reporting period, while Titan's Simpsons Comics is only marginally lower, from 64,882 to  64,078.

The move from BBC Worldwide to Immediate Media in November 2011 does not seem to have hurt young reader titles such as Toybox and CBeebies Weekly  - in fact many are up on the last reporting period.

Immediate enjoyed an excellent performance across its pre-school portfolio, up 24.1 per cent year on year (y-o-y). This includes excellent growth across the CBeebies portfolio including CBeebies Art, at 63,679, (up 23.4% y-o-y), and from CBeebies Weekly, at 55,516, up 2.2% y-o-y, as well as a strong debut from Octonauts magazine at 61,750. CBeebies Weekly remains the UK’s top children’s title in terms of circulation.

While not a comic, there's good news, too, for satirical cartoon-packed magazine Private Eye, with its sales at 230,000 fortnightly sales. The Guardian notes this is its highest circulation for more than 25 years as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Editor Ian Hislop, who credits the recent successes to the magazine's journalists and satirists said: "10% growth in a year, I feel like the chancellor – in his dreams.

"I would like to say it was down to my brilliance but the razzmatazz over the 50th birthday helped and there have been some great issues," he added. "The anniversary issue was a great cover. It was a very special year and a lot of our stories came good, whether it was hacking, or PFI or the Hartnett [tax sweetheart deals] story."

One final batch of figures from ABC that may be of interest are the sales figures for the Sunday Post newspaper (Commando by the way is not ABC rated). This Scottish Sunday paper is the home of The Broons and Oor Wullie and during January 2012 the average sales figures per issue were 302,388 which was made up of 215,861 issues in Scotland, 85,326 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined, 823 issues in Eire and 378 issues in other countries. Since it is generally accepted that Sunday papers are read by more than one person, that is a lot of potential readers of Wullie, Maw and the rest of the family.

• The Audit Bureau of Circulations website is here


• British Comic Sales Table on downthetubes

• The Beano and BeanoMAX website is here and subscription details are here for The Beano and here for BeanoMAX.

• The Dandy website is here and subscription details for The Dandy are here.

Private Eye marks 50th anniversary with special issue

Issue 1300 of Private Eye, on sale 26th October, will be a special issue marking its 50th birthday.

This landmark event for the magazine - which has always featured cartoons and comic strips satirising British life and politics - is also being marked by Private Eye: The First 50 Years. an exhibition of art at the V&A Museum in London, which runs until 8th January 2012.


Founded in 1961, Private Eye has survived and prospered for half a century by entertaining, informing and irritating its readers with a unique mix of jokes, journalism, campaigning and gossip. In August, MediaWeek noted that the magazine had retained its position as the UK's leading domestic current affairs magazine with an average circulation of 206, 266 per issue in the first half of 2011.

Despite representing a marginal drop of 0.1% on the previous six months, and down 0.7% year on year, the current affairs magazine remains more than 20,000 copies larger per issue than its nearest rival, The Week.

The bumper edition of the magazine on sale next week will look back at 50 years of exposing political corruption and scandal.






Private Eye: The First 50 Years. the V&A's free exhibition, explores the wealth of artistic talent that the magazine has fostered by showing the original artwork for some of the finest and funniest Private Eye cartoons. Over its 50 year history, It's published and promoted the work of more than 90 artists, many of whom started their careers at the magazine, including Ken Pyne (above) Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, William Rushton, Barry Fantoni, Michael Heath, John Kent and Ed McLachlan.

Strips have also included a Dan Dare spoof, 'Dan Dire' in the 1990s, lampooning Labour leader Neil Kinnock, drawn by Nick Newman.

The illustrations are being shown in thematic sections on politics, royalty and social observation and are richly varied in style and tone and take the form of single cartoons with captions, long-running strips and caricatures.

Ian Hislop, Editor of Private Eye - who is celebrating 25 years as editor - has chosen 50 of the best of the trademark front covers, one from every year the magazine has been published. The front covers are arranged in a timeline, offering a graphic satirical history of the news over five decades.


Visually, Private Eye is renowned for its low-fi aesthetic. The cut-and-paste production technique and overall look have changed little in over 50 years, despite the switch from cowgum to computers and letraset to the internet.

Private Eye: The First 50 Years aims to evoke the atmosphere of the magazine’s Soho office, with a recreation of the editor’s paper-strewn desk plus seldom-seen ephemera from the magazine’s past campaigns and court cases, plus as a life-sized cut out of Tony Blair, a stuffed dog, a flying Robert Maxwell and a giant inflatable banana.

"At last," note Hislop, "Private Eye makes an art of itself."

The 50th anniversary is not just being celebrated by the magazine in print. Last month saw the release of Private Eye: The First 50 Years, an A-Z - a lavishly illustrated, definitive history of the magazine, charting its rise from 300 copies of the first edition on 25th October 1961, to a fortnightly readership of 700,000.


Written by Private Eye journalist Adam Macqueen, who has been with the magazine since 1997, the book offers is an in-depth, witty and occasionally critical appraisal of the magazine, a long-awaited volume "containing everything you ever wanted to know about the nation’s favourite satirical organ" (it says here).

At last the origin of Ugandan discussions will be disclosed, along with the story behind that Andrew Neil photo, and the identity of Britain’s Biggest Pseud. Plus the inside story of the magazine’s many high-profile legal battles, scoops and staff bust-ups, told by those who were there.

In addition to a wealth of new material, the book features exclusive interviews with current editor, Ian Hislop, his predecessor Richard Ingrams and co-founder, Christopher Booker, plus a host of other key figures past and present.

The book also contains exclusive reminiscences and revelations about former contributors including Peter Cook, Auberon Waugh and Willie Rushton, in addition to rare archive material, unseen photographs and an abundance of cartoons from the likes of Nick Newman, Tony Husband and Michael Heath – many never before published.

Also on sale now is the 2011 Private Eye Annual presenting the very best of Private Eye’s unique blend of wit and humour, jam-packed with pages of parody, the funniest spoofs, gags, cartoons, photo bubbles and topical humour.

Consistently found in the best seller chart and selling in excess of 78,000 copies last year alone, it's a must for every Christmas stocking.


- Official Private Eye web site: www.private-eye.co.uk


- Private Eye cover gallery: www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php

- V&A Private Eye Exhibition: www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/private-eye-the-first-50-years


- Shortlist interview with Ian Hislop: http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/ian-hislop

Cover images and cartoons copyright Private Eye