The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) said today that its board has unanimously voted to sanction the Toronto Sun for what it calls a “significant” audit adjustment exceeding 5% related to its September 2007 audit. The Sun is the first Canadian publication to be sanctioned by ABC, said Neal Lulofs, senior vice-president of communications and strategic planning with the Schaumburg, Ill.-based auditing firm.
ABC said it will issue the Sun’s September 2007 audit report within the next 10 days, and that the report will show downward circulation adjustments of 21,004 average weekday copies (11.2%), 18,191 average Saturday copies (11.7%) and 49,869 average Sunday copies (15.1%).
The Sun is the flagship paper of Sun Media Corp., which, along with Torstar and Transcontinental, defected from ABC to rival auditing firm Canadian Circulation Audit Board (CCAB) earlier this year.
While the Sun is no longer an ABC member, the board opted to apply sanctions because the audit was conducted while it was still an ABC member and the publication was “aware of the discrepancies” before resigning from ABC, according to an ABC statement.
Sun publisher Kin-Man Lee said circulation programs that passed ABC audits in 2005 and 2006 were met with an adjustment in 2007. “We’ve had these programs in place for at least a couple of years,” he said earlier today. “They were all within the ABC guidelines in previous years, and in 2007, even though the programs haven’t changed, the audit results have changed.
“That’s all we know. These are just observations that we’ve made.”
Lee said the new ABC audit is more of a “reclassification,” with some of the paper’s circulation now classified as unpaid rather than third-party paid. Total circulation remains unchanged, he stressed.
“That’s what is a bit misleading about their press release,” said Lee. “They talk about a proposed reduction and in fact from our perspective it’s really a reclassification.”
The sanction “from a practical perspective has no impact on us,” said Lee, although he said there is “some concern” about that ABC went public with the information and the downward revision. “It kind of caught me by surprise,” he said.
“Since they were ABC members during this period, and our advertiser members have a right to know this information as well, we will indeed publish their audit report,” said Lulofs.
Should the Sun wish to re-join ABC, it will now have to meet a lengthy list of requirements. They include submitting what ABC describes as a “plan of corrective action” and undergoing six-month audits for two years. The first audit released following its re-admittance would also note that the newspaper is under sanction.
“Certainly this would discourage us from rejoining, which surprises me that ABC has taken this tack,” said Lee.
Lee doesn’t anticipate any advertiser backlash as a result of the ABC decision, but said the paper is embarking on a communication program with clients. “There was a lot of backlash from certain individuals in the community when we shifted from ABC to CCAB and I think it’s just an issue of communication and explaining exactly what it means. We never had any negative impact [from an ad sales perspective] when we switched. We don’t expect that there’ll be any significant impact.”
