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While Hindi dailies continued to enjoy the highest readership, Malayalam and Oriya dailies turned out to be the stars of the show
In terms of languages, Hindi dailies continue to enjoy the highest readership vis-à-vis other languages. The AIR for any Hindi daily is 5.60 crore, although readership declined by 2 per cent - 11,21,000 readers in comparison to the last round.
Among other languages, Marathi dailies came in No 2 with an AIR of 1.81 crore. However, its readership declined by 4.12 lakh – 2.22 per cent. Following Marathi - in terms of readership - came English dailies with an AIR of 1.66 crore. However like Hindi and Marathi, its AIR also declined - by 1.82 per cent (3.08 lakh readers).
Malayalam dailies’ at No 4 with an AIR of 1.55 crore, added 1,56,000 readers, which is the highest growth for any language. Tamil dailies, meanwhile, rose marginally by 41,000 readers from 1,26,65,000 in IRS 2007 Round 1 to the current 1,27,06,000. At No 6, Gujarati dailies are next in terms of readership (1.13 crore), a little less than 1.12 crore in the last round.
On the other hand, Kannada dailies are the only one from the south to have registered a decline. They lost 2.16 lakh readers to touch 77,41,000 (AIR). Oriya dailies were lucky to have witnessed the maximum growth in percentage terms - 4 per cent from 28.34 lakh to 29.45 lakh. In absolute terms, the AIR for any Oriya daily has increased by 1.11 lakh. While Punjabi dailies lost just 8,000 readers with an AIR of 22 lakh. Assamese gained 32,000 readers is the last in the list with 21.55 lakh readers.