Print medium reaches 200 million : NRSC 2005

The National Readership Studies Council (NRSC), released recently, reveals that growth of the print medium has again surpassed expectations. According to the NRSC daily newspapers and magazines now reach 200 million people against 179 million people three years ago.

However, the growth of television and radio has taken its toll on the urban populace. The reach of the print medium, in urban areas has fallen from 48 per cent to 46 per cent, while there has been a corresponding rise of readers in rural India — from 17 per cent to 19 per cent. This is on top of a larger population base has resulted in there being almost equal number of readers in rural India at 101 million as in urban India at 98 million.

The survey has bad news for magazines. It says that the growth in newspaper supplements has resulted in the decline in the reader base for magazines in both urban and rural India. The reach of magazines has declined from 86 million in 2002 to 69 million in 2005.

The survey also revealed that readers also spend more time reading their newspapers — up from 30 minutes to 39 minutes a day over the last three years. The increase is sharp both in urban India (from 32 to 42 minutes) and in rural India (from 27 to 35 minutes).

Dainik Jagranwidest read daily
According to the NRSC the most widely read daily is the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran with a readership of 21,123,000 and Dainik Bhaskar with 17,373,000 readers standing second. Of the 'top 10' dailies, nine are in regional languages — five in Hindi, and one each in Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, and Bengali — and one in English. Malayalam newspapers have been excluded from this.