Business Standard is out of NRS 2005

Business Standard will not be a part of NRS 2005 anymore. The business daily had raised objection with the NRS 2005 figures, which quoted its readership figure at 33,000.

In contrast, as per IRS 2005 – which is another readership survey conducted by Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and Hansa Research – the readership of Business Standard stands at 106,000 readers.

Akila Urankar, president, Business Standard, says, “Our ABC certified average net paid sales for the period July-December 2004 was 69,782 copies. And, it is really strange that our readership figure as per NRS 2005 was less than that. This was not acceptable for us. Therefore, we asked NRS to remove us from the survey report.”

Shailendra Kalekar, DGM, marketing communication, Business Standard, adds, “Our readership figure as per NRS 2005 is actually half of that of our circulation figure. Can any one believe that Business Standard's readership is less than one per copy? If this is true, it will imply that we dump our copies. The readership estimate was highly damning for us as it sent wrong signals in the industry.”

agencyfaqs! spoke to National Readership Studies Council (NRSC) to get its point of view. RK Sharma, vice-president, NRSC says, “The margin of error is inversely proportional to the penetration of a daily in a given state. If the penetration of a publication in any given state is less than 2 per cent, the margin of error will increase and vice-versa.”

As per NRSC, any sample survey is subject to statistical error. In case of NRS 2005, the tolerance level of error for a publication with a penetration of 2 per cent of the entire population of any given state is 0.5 per cent. The normal relative error is 25 per cent.

As per senior industry sources, the relative error in case of Business Standard – which has a penetration of less than 2 per cent – is much higher.

The confidence limit of this survey is 90 per cent, which means that if the same survey is conducted 100 times, using the same methodology, results for 90 per cent of the survey will be very close

Sharma of NRSC clarified that Business Standard will not be included when NRSC disperses its survey report.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!