Readership
At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, The Times had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies, in comparison to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival The Daily Telegraph. By November 2005 The Times sold an average of 691,283 copies per day, the second-highest of any British "quality" newspaper (after The Daily Telegraph, which had a circulation of 903,405 copies in the period), and the highest in terms of full-rate sales. By June 2012 The Times' average daily circulation had fallen to 400,120 copies, compared to The Daily Telegraph's 573,674, with the two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers. In contrast The Sun, the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,583,552 copies in June 2012, and the Daily Mail, the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,939,635 copies in the period.
In a 2009 national readership survey The Times was found to have the highest number of ABC1 25–44 readers and the largest numbers of readers in London of any of the "quality" papers.
Read more about this topic: The Times