Arcopol Chaudhuri

Mumbai: The icing on the cake has come at the cost of slicing of the cake.

The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 — currently the only benchmark for gauging readership of print publications, as the National Readership Survey remains “in hibernation” till 2009 — has released its first round findings, painting a picture of the print media rife with fragmentation.

IRS Round 1 shows that while most publications have increased their circulation during the past one year, there has been a decline in readership per paper across publications and languages.

This means, readership has got distributed amongst the newer publications.

Analysts attribute this to lower disposable income growth, a factor more relevant to the regional press. They, however, point out that a decline in the overall readership could be due to change in survey methodology and gaps in the survey process.

“Readership is an important barometer to gauge the performance of papers in conjunction with circulation. Most markets witnessed fragmentation with new players maintaining or improving market share,” note Vikash Mantri and Rishi Agrawal from ICICI Securities.

By a simple thumb rule, newspaper readership is thrice the circulation figures. In other words, a single newspaper copy would be read by about three people.

“This number has come down, which means the same copy is being read by say, about two people only,” say analysts. One reason could be that people are buying more than one newspaper, say media buyers.

In a bid to drive more circulation, several mainstream newspapers have resorted to annual cost-effective subscription schemes, wherein the per-unit cost of the paper is much lower than the news stand price.Thanks to these, the papers are reaching people’s homes at throw-away prices.

Chandradeep Mitra, president, Mudra MAX says, “Subscription has allowed more people to gain access to newspapers, but whether they are reading all of it is debatable. Readership therefore has taken a beating.”

The situation therefore poses two challenges for publishers and advertisers.

For advertisers, this means coming to terms with a phenomenon Bhupesh Trivedi, publisher, Indian Media Observer terms “duplication of ad spends.”

“If a household is subscribing to three daily newspapers, why would the advertiser pay a premium and publish his ad in all of them? He’ll push for an ad in only a highcirculation daily newspaper, and divert the rest of his print ad spends on magazines and other mediums,” says Trivedi.

Therefore, if the current trend of declining readership continues and advertisers act upon “duplication,” in all logic, ad revenues will take a beating.

But, media planners say advertisers need not get their act together, just yet.

Part of the reason is that ad sales representatives and media planners are not convinced the IRS has increased its simple size in a manner corresponding to the economic growth at its centres of publication.

“Almost every English daily and regional newspaper has resorted to publishing audience-centric local supplements.

The survey findings don’t map their readership yet, which is ironical considering advertisers want to increase targeting such supplements,” said a media buyer, quoting anonymity.

Several media planners contacted by DNA Money said they did not go by the IRS figures and were awaiting the National Readership Survey statistics.

“The IRS 2008 R1 findings do not really throw up any surprises. The idea is not to look at the survey findings at face value, but apply a certain qualitative judgement to it,” says a senior media buyer.

But, experts caution that publishers and media agencies cannot place the blame squarely on an outdated survey methodology alone.

“In the long run, publishers will have to adapt,” says Trivedi.

“The way we consume newspapers is changing. The next generation of newspaper readers is today spending 4-5 hours online, and they’d want to consume news online as well. Publications will have to work on their online editions, and not merely paste the print edition on the web,” he says.

Source : DNA