MUMBAI: More people are reading daily newspapers and fewer are reading magazines. Television viewing has increased as have listeners for FM radio but the growth in the usage of Internet has been slower than anticipated. These are some of the findings of the National Readership Study (NRS 2006), the largest survey of its kind in the world.

The study has a sample size of 284,373 house-to-house interviews and covers 535 publications — 230 dailies and 305 magazines. It measures media exposure and consumer product penetration in urban and rural India.

According to NRS 2006, the readership of daily newspapers continues to grow. They have added 12.6 million readers since last year and reach 203.6 million people. Together with magazines, whose readership has declined, they now reach 222 million readers compared with 216 million readers last year.

NRS 2006 has compiled a list of 18 dailies that are part of the "Five Million Club", that is with a readership exceeding five million. Heading the list are Dainik Jagran (21.2 million) and Dainik Bhaskar (21 million). The gap in the readership figures of these two leading Hindi dailies has decreased this year from 380,000 last year to 200,000 readers this year. Of the 18 dailies in the "Five Million Club," six are in Hindi, three in Tamil, two each in Gujarati, Malayalam and Marathi and one each in Bengali, Telugu and English.

The only English daily with a readership of over five million is The Times of India (7.4 million). Its readership has declined from last year as has its position in the rankings from number 9 to number 11 out of 18. The Hindu has emerged second among English dailies with 4.05 million readers followed by Hindustan Times, which held second place last year. Despite its new edition in Mumbai with a readership of 360,000, Hindustan Times has slipped to number three (3.85 million).

The largest growth in readership has been seen in the Hindi belt. Indian language dailies as a whole have grown substantially in the last year from 191 million readers to 203.6 million readers. The readership of English dailies, on the other hand, has stagnated at around 21 million.

The reach of satellite television has exceeded that of the print media with 230 million individuals watching television, up from 207 million in 2005. NRS 2006 estimates that 112 million Indian homes are now reached by television. The number of homes with cable and satellite television has also grown from 61 million last year to 68 million this year. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh lead other States in terms of the reach of TV.

Internet usage grew from a low base of 7.2 million to 9.4 million, with the number of users who logged in every week growing by 30.5 per cent over the year. The number of individuals who accessed the Internet over the last three months was 12.6 million, a 16.7 per cent increase over last year.

Of the Internet users, 10.8 million are in cities while rural India has merely 1.8 million, indicating a stagnation. The study also found that more people are now accessing the Internet at cyber cafes (34 per cent) or at home (30 per cent) than at the workplace (20 per cent).

Radio's increased reach

One medium that has shown notable growth is radio, with its reach increasing from 23 per cent to 27 per cent of the population. FM radio has been the main reason for this growth, where the number of individuals listening in an average week has grown from 76 million to 119 million in 2006 — a 55 per cent increase.

While in the country as a whole, cinema viewership has declined from 51 million individuals who would go to the cinema at least once a month to 39 million, in urban India it has increased marginally from 23 million regular cinemagoers last year to 25 million this year.

NRS has recognised mobile phones as a part of media and finds that the proportion of the population accessing value-added services (VAS) at least once a week has grown from 1.1 per cent last year to 2.7 per cent this year, that is 22 million individuals.

NRS 2006 also looked at topics of interest for the first time. It found that apart from news and politics, readers were most interested in sports followed by films and television serials.

National Readership Studies Council

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