Some of the UK’s biggest regional news brands have suffered dramatic audience declines while a number of Newsquest-owned titles posted significant growth despite a wider downturn across the sector.
Latest IPSOS Iris figures for April show total page views across regional news websites fell 30.4% year-on-year to 525.6m, while unique users dropped 8.6% to 31.9m.
The data reveals sharply contrasting fortunes for the country’s largest publishers. Reach’s flagship regional brands remain the biggest local news websites in the UK, but many recorded substantial audience losses. The Manchester Evening News retained its position as the nation’s largest regional news site with 6.8m monthly users, despite a 27.4% decline year-on-year. Liverpool Echo was down 17.1% to 5.9m users, while Birmingham Mail fell 35.5% to 5.4m.
Elsewhere in the North, the picture was similarly challenging for several Reach titles. Leeds Live saw one of the steepest falls, with its audience dropping 80.5% to 807,085 monthly users, while page views fell 78% to 2.58m. ExaminerLive’s audience was down 58%, LancsLive fell 54.9%, Gazette Live dropped 46.5% and ChronicleLive declined 43.6%.
By contrast, Newsquest continued to post strong growth across a number of its titles. The Herald in Scotland almost doubled its audience, rising 99.1% to 2.93m users, while page views increased 121.5% to 6.5m. Oxford Mail recorded audience growth of 93.4% and Dorset Echo surged 158.2%, making it one of the fastest-growing local news websites in the UK.
Several Newsquest-owned Northern titles also delivered strong performances. The News & Star increased page views by 73.1% to 8.3m and posted the highest engagement score among major regional news brands, with users spending an average of 8.64 minutes on the site. The Lancashire Telegraph increased page views by 52.7% to 3.53m while maintaining strong engagement levels of 2.53 minutes per user.
The Northern Echo saw page views rise by 50.4% to 5.6m despite a modest 5.6% decline in audience, suggesting significantly deeper engagement among readers.
The figures also highlight the continued importance of scale for Reach’s largest brands. Despite substantial audience declines, the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo still generated more than 30m monthly page views each, comfortably ahead of every other regional news site in the UK.
However, with overall regional news consumption continuing to fall and a growing number of Newsquest titles reporting audience and engagement gains, the latest figures suggest the battle for digital readers is increasingly being won through loyalty and depth of engagement rather than sheer reach alone.
