Sarabjit Kaur
The domestic newspaper market continued to defy global trends recording healthy growth numbers and has added as many as 11.2 crore new readers during the past four years, taking the overall readership to 40.7 crore, the latest Indian Readership Survey (IRS) report said.
The numbers were mostly supported by the Hindi dailies whose readership surged a whopping 45 per cent to 17.6 crore, which also led to the once-dominant English dailies slipping from the top 10 league, as it could manage only a 10 per cent growth to 2.8 crore.
While there is not a single English daily in the top 10 table, barring these regional dailies – Daily Thanthi (4th), Lokmat (5th), Malayala Manorama (7th) and Eenadu (9th), all the top dailies are Hindi broadsheets.
While market leader Dainik Jagran tops with 7,03,77,000 readers, The Times of India comes at a distant 11th slot with a total readership of 1,30,47,000.
The last IRS report was released in January 2014 and the number of readers back then stood at 29.5 crore. It is a study of the print media readership published by the Readership Studies Council of India, an industry body jointly formed by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The latest IRS 2017 report covers a full year sample size of 3.2 lakh households.
While it notes a nine per cent readership growth among people over 12 years (last one month readership), with growth across languages, English dailies do not feature among the top 10 in total readership.
The readership of Hindi dailies surged 45 per cent, to 17.6 crore, compared to 12.1 crore in IRS 2014. Odia dailies added the maximum readership with 84 per cent jump over last four years from 0.6 crore in IRS 2014 to 1.1 crore in IRS 2017. English readership has grown by 10 per cent touching 2.8 crore in IRS 2017 as against 2.5 crore in IRS 2014.
As per IRS 2017 report, Dainik Jagran leads the readership, with 7,03,77,000, followed by Hindustan with a total readership of 5,23,97,000. Amar Ujala has a total readership of 4,60,94,000, while Dainik Bhaskar has 4,51,05,000 and the Tamil paper Daily Thanthi at 2,31,49,000.
The Marathi daily Lokmat occupies the sixth place, with a total readership of 1,80,66,000, followed by Rajasthan Patrika with a total readership of 1,63,26,000 and Malayala Manorama with a total readership of 1,59,99,000. The Telugu daily Eenadu is at the ninth spot with 1,58,48,000 total readership, while Prabhat Khabar occupies the 10th position with a total readership of 1,34,92,000.
The English genre market leader The Times of India comes at a distant 11th spot with a total readership of 1,30,47,000.
“According to the findings of the report, 39 per cent of Indians (12+ years) read newspapers, and 20 per cent of all newspaper readers in 50 lakh plus population towns read newspapers online.
“These numbers most definitely tell us that there is a bright future waiting for the print industry,” said Ashish Bhasin, MRUC chairman and also chairman of Dentsu Aegis Networks and its South Asia CEO.
The MRUC, however, said that it would be unfair to compare the results with the past editions due to changes in the methodology. “We have strengthened the report with additions such as total readership, readership numbers for 7 days and 3 days and the separate reporting of newspaper variants,” N P Sathyamurthy, chairman of the RSCI technical committee and executive director of DDB Mudra Group, said.
