IRS 2007, Round 2: South Indian and Hindi dailies decline; English, Bengali, Punjabi up

According to the current round of the IRS, Hindi dailies maintain their lead position among all dailies, but their average issue readership has declined marginally by 1.60 per cent, while English dailies are up by 1 per cent

Among the several language dailies, any Hindi dailies average issue readership (AIR) continues to be the highest. The AIR for any Hindi daily as per Round 2 of IRS 2007 stands at 5.72 crore, which nevertheless is a decline of 1.6 per cent from the last IRS round.

Marathi dailies hold the second position in the list with an AIR of 1.85 crore, but even these have seen a decline of 2.5 per cent in AIR.

English dailies, which are always accused of taking away the advertising pie from Hindi and other regional language dailies, have shown a growth in readership. The average issue readership of any English daily has moved up by 1 per cent vis-à-vis the previous round of IRS to 1.69 crore readers, thus holding the third position on the list.

In the current round of IRS, in East India, Bengali and Oriya dailies have also registered a growth in readership, as have Punjabi (rank 11) and Urdu (rank 13) dailies. The average issue readership of Bengali (ranked 7) and Oriya (ranked 10) dailies have grown by 4.32 per cent, and 1.69 per cent, respectively. Their individual AIR figures stand at 1.04 crore (Bengali) and 28.34 lakh (Oriya), respectively. However, Assamese dailies (ranked 12), also from East India, have shrunk in readership by 2.17 per cent, and the current AIR of any Assamese daily stands at 21.23 lakh.

Punjabi dailies have registered the maximum AIR growth, having grown by 63.56 per cent, while the readership of any Urdu daily has grown by 5.44 per cent. The AIR of any Punjabi daily has reached 22.08 lakh, while that of any Urdu daily has an average issue readership of 5.23 lakh.

All South Indian language dailies, whether Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam, have seen a decline in readership. Ranked at number four, Malayalam dailies continue to be the largest read among all the four South Indian language dailies, with an AIR of 1.54 crore. However, even Malayalam dailies have seen a marginal decline in readership of 0.14 per cent.

The AIR of any Tamil daily (rank 5) has had a slightly larger decline in readership of 3.55 per cent with an AIR of 1.26 crore. Telugu and Kannada dailies, ranked eighth and ninth, respectively, have also registered negative AIR growth of 1.55 and 5.47 per cent, respectively. As per the current round of IRS, the readership of Telugu and Kannada dailies stands at 96.04 lakh and 79.57 lakh, respectively.