I have been looking at the sales data coming in from newsagents for the sales benchmark study I am doing comparing January 2010 with 2009. If the sample I have seen (40 newsagencies) so far is anything to go by, January was a hellish month for many newsagents in the magazine department. I am seeing double digit decline. To (kind of) counterbalance this, a couple of newsagents are reporting double digit sales growth.
Looking at the stores reporting declines, they are all over the place including the critical weeklies.
I’ll have a better view early next week when I have a data from 120 newsagencies to consider.