Costing 7d and comprising four densely packed pages, it was issued on Thursday mornings.

[4] The paper's price was reduced to fourpence halfpenny on 8 September 1836 and dropped a further penny in 1855 as a result of the reduction in newspaper stamp duty.

The paper dropped its price to 3d in 1870 and in 1873 it began to publish three times a week – on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

[4] Publication days were changed from Wednesday and Saturday to Tuesday and Friday on 1 March 1977.

By 1832, the PA was already claiming success, suggesting it had doubled subscription numbers during the previous twelve months, and the paper claimed to be "not only the largest of any paper in the country, but equal, if not superior, to that of any provincial journal in the Kingdom".