Profits at the parent company of the Irish Daily Mail and its sister paper, the Irish Mail on Sunday, increased by 5.9 per cent to €2.08 million in the financial year to October 2nd 2016.
Accounts recently filed with the companies office for Associated Newspapers (Ireland) limited show that the company’s turnover in 2016 was €17.35 million, also up marginally on the previous year.
Associated Newspapers (Ireland), which is ultimately owned by Viscount Rothermere, employed an average of 137 staff in the 12-month period, down from 142 the previous year. Wages and salary costs for that period dropped by 3.5 per cent to €9.25 million.
At the time the accounts were filed, the company’s creditors were owed more than €14 million, €12.2 million of which was owed to group undertakings. However, the total amount owed was down by almost 5 per cent on the previous year.
Circulation figures for the six months to the end of December 2016 for the Irish Daily Mail showed that the paper had an average daily readership of 42,081. The Irish Mail on Sunday had a circulation of 79,394. Aside from the newspaper brands, Associated Newspapers also owns Evoke.ie, a website focusing on celebrity and fashion news.
Subscription product
DMG Media Ireland, the company that publishes the Irish Daily Mail, will launch a new digital edition subscription product in the Irish Mail on Sunday tomorrow.
Although some content produced by Mail journalists at its Dublin office was already available through its free access, web-only brands Extra.ie and Evoke.ie, this will be the first time that the newspapers will be available in full in a digital format.
The Irish Mail Plus digital subscription offers mobile and tablet users digital replicas of both the daily and Sunday titles for an introductory offer of €10.99 a month, or €9.99 a month if the subscriber commits to a 12-month contract.
The company is also bundling a 12 month-subscription to the newspaper with an Amazon Fire 7 tablet, for the introductory price of €12.99 a month.
The tablet also includes Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa, which can read the digital newspaper aloud.
"Getting people to pay for journalism online, that for me is at the heart of everything," said Sebastian Hamilton, group editor of the Irish Mail titles.
Mr Hamilton said there would only be a small crossover of material between the digital edition and Extra.ie, the news site launched in February this year.
“We take the view that they are very different, complementary brands.”
