Special: IRS 2010 R1: No major change in readership amongst top 10 publications

After reporting a marginal growth in total readership in the last round of IRS, Dainik Jagran, the No. 1 publication in the country, has again lost a few readers. In the last round (R2, 2009), it had gained around 2 lakh readers, but in this round it has lost around 5 lakh readers. From 5.66 crore total readers in R1, 2008, it has come down to 5.43 crore in the current round.

Dainik Bhaskar, the No.2 publication of the country, has added around 4 lakh total readers in the current round (R1, 2010) in a way trying to compensate the 5.9 lakh readers, it had lost in the previous round (R2, 2009). In R1, 2009, it had also lost around 2.8 lakh readers, but had gained around 33 lakh readers in both the rounds of IRS 2008. Currently, its total readership stands at 3.34 crore – around 14 lakh readers more than IRS 2008, R1.

The No.3 position amongst the top dailies has been regained by Hindustan. The Hindi daily has added around 14 lakh readers in the current round (R1, 2010). In the previous four rounds of IRS (R1&2, 2009 and R1&2, 2008), the newspaper had added 44 lakh total readers. In the current round, its total readership stands at 2.94 crore.

Amar Ujala, which has been pushed to the No.4 position, in the current round has lost around 3 lakh readers. In R2, 2009, the Hindi daily had gained around 4 lakh readers compensating for the 9 lakh readers, it had lost in the previous two rounds (R1, 2009 and R2, 2008). Its total readership now stands at 2.87 crore.

The Marathi daily, Lokmat has retained its No.5 position which it had gained from Daily Thanthi in R1, 2009. The newspaper which has added close to 10 lakh readers in the previous two rounds has added another lakh in the current round. It total readership in R1, 2010 is 2.33 crore.

Daily Thanthi, at No.6, has added around 1 lakh readers in the current round. This is a positive indication for the Tamil daily as it had been losing readers in the previous few rounds. In the last five rounds of IRS, it had lost around 6 lakh readers. Its total readership now stands at 2.03 crore.

Dinakaran, another Tamil daily has also added 4 lakh readers in R1, 2010 thus compensating for the 4.5 lakh readers it had lost in the previous two rounds (R1&2, 2009). However, the newspaper has still to make up its previous losses. Two years ago, in R1, 2008, the newspaper had 1.7 crore total readers which is now 1.67 crore.

Ananda Bazar Patrika which had been enjoying a roller-coaster ride in the previous few rounds, has maintained a status quo this time with 1.53 crore readers. In R2, 2009, the Bengali daily had also lost around 1.7 lakh readers. In the previous round (R1, 2009), the Bengali daily had added around 1.21 lakh readers, however in the round before that, it had lost around 1.7 lakh readers.

Eenadu, at No.9 which had moved up by one position in the previous round pushing Rajasthan Patrika to No.10, has also maintained a status quo from the previous round with 1.47 crore readers. In the last few rounds of IRS, the newspaper had gone through a few ups and downs in readership. While it had gained around 5.02 lakh readers between R1, 2007 and R1, 2008, it lost around 7 lakh readers in the next two rounds (R1, 2009 and R2, 2008). However in R2, 2009, the Telugu daily has added around 6.7 lakh new readers.

Rajasthan Patrika, which had lost around 68,000 total readers in R2, 2009, has gained around 2 lakh readers in the current round. In R1, 2009, it had gained 52,000 readers, but in R2, 2008, the Hindi daily had lost around 3.4 lakh total readers. Currently its total readership stands at 1.42 crore.

The Times of India, India's No.1 English daily is at No. 11 with a total readership of 1.34 crore. In the last two rounds it had added around 2 lakh readers but this time it has lost around 83,000 readers.

Replacing Malayala Manorama at No. 12 is Telugu daily Sakshi which has gained around 4 lakh readers in the current round. From 1.25 crore total readers in the current round, it has gone up to 1.29 crore.

Malayala Manorama which had added around 3 lakh readers in last round (R2, 2009) has lost equal number of readers in the current around thus going back to where it was a year ago – a total readership of 1.26 crore.

Daily Sakal, the Marathi newspaper is at No. 14 with a total readership of 1.14 crore – a loss of 1 lakh readers followed by Punjab Kesari at No. 15 with a total readership of 1.05 crore – a gain of 1 lakh readers.

(Total Readership includes any reader who has read any of the last six issues, where as average issue readership includes only those readers, who have read the last issue.)