This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The Dublin Evening Herald is to be renamed and rebranded. The Independent News & Media (INM) title will be called The Herald and will be marketed as a morning paper.

This will place it in direct competition with two of INM's own daily titles - the Irish Independent and the Irish Daily Star.

According to a Sunday Times report, the Herald will make its morning debut before the end of March.

In 2009, INM merged its Herald AM free title with Metro AM, a joint venture between the Daily Mail group and the Irish Times. But sales of the Evening Herald have been sluggish.

The latest ABC figures, for the six months up to December 2012, show that it fell 5.8% year on year to record a circulation of 58,826. More than 2,500 of those were bulk sales.

It is possible that the Herald will steal sales away from the Star, which is jointly owned by INM and Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell. The two groups fell out in September last year after the Star published topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge.

The Irish Star's sales had been falling in line with the overall downward trend in the UK and Ireland. But matters have worsened recently. In January, its audited sale was 62,277, down 12.8% on the same month last year. At one time, it sold more than 100,000 in Ireland.

Source: Sunday Times Ireland