P.M. BRIEFING : Sports Daily to Hike Distribution

The National said today that its circulation and ad sales are on target and that it will boost distribution by 40% soon by expanding in its first three markets: Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Publisher Peter Price said March 15 that the sports daily is selling about 200,000 of the 250,000 copies it prints every day, matching the target set for the paper.

The National is distributed Sunday through Friday, and plans are to add six to 12 more cities by Dec. 31, when Price hopes that half a million copies will be distributed every day.

Advertisers have been told that it will start printing a second edition with a deadline three hours earlier than normal so papers can be distributed the next morning on newsstands farther away from the centers of its three markets.