By ASHWIN PINTO
Indiantelevision.com Team

(29 August 2006 7:30 pm)

MUMBAI: The National Readership Studies Council (NRSC) has released the findings of the National readership Survey (NRS) 2006. The study covers 7,000 cities, towns and villages, 284,000 individuals and 535 publications.

The survey notes that the number of C&S homes has increased from 61 million in 2005 to 68 million this year. There are 112 million TV homes in India compared with 108 million last year. The number of homes with a colour television set has grown from 58 million last year to 64 million this year. The increment of 10.4 per cent runs parallel to the growth in C&S.

The number of homes with a PC has grown from 3 million last year to 3.7 million this year.

Surprisingly, the number of internet homes has not grown much from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.

The number of homes with a landline has grown from 27.1 million to 30.8 million. Not surprisingly the number of homes with mobile users has jumped from 6.6 million last year to 26.2 million this year.

How the different media attack up in terms of reach:

The reach of the press has increased from 216 million to 222 million. The reach has stabilised in urban and rural India has stabilised at 45 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. Both urban and rural India have the same amount of readers – 112 million versus 110 million readers.

Dailies have driven this growth Dailies have driven growth in the press medium, their reach rising as a proportion of all individuals aged 12 years and above – which is the universe defined for NRS – from 24 per cent to 25 per cent. Magazines have declined in reach from 9 per cent to 8 per cent over the last one year.

The time spent reading has remained the same – at 39 minutes daily on an average per day over the last year. But there has been an increase in urban India (from 41 to 44 minutes daily) and decrease in rural India (from 36 to 35 minutes daily).

Satellite TV has grown in reach – from 207 million individuals watching in an average week in 2005 to as many as 230 million individuals in 2006 – further expanding its lead over the number of readers.

The southern states Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh dominate the markets with TV reach of 76.2 per cent, 76.2 per cent and 78 per cent respectively. These states also have high penetration of cable and satellite at 60 per cent, 53 per cent and 59 per cent respectively.

Radio: This is one medium that has shown resurgence.
Its reach has increased from 23 per cent to 27 per cent of the population listening to any station in the average week. This almost equals the number of readers. FM has driven the better reach – from 76 million individuals listening in an average week in 2005 to as many as 119 million individuals in 2006 – a
55 per cent increase over last year.

Cinema: One medium that has lost ground is cinema. It has declined sharply from 51 million individuals going regularly to the movies (at least once a month) to 39 million. This has been the story for years now. However, the cinema audience seems to have been reversed in urban India – from 23 million regular theatre-goers last year NRS now estimates there are 25 million. As a proportion this means a marginal increase from 9.6 per cent to 10 per cent.

Internet: As a medium it seems to have paused on its growth trajectory. From 7.2 million users who logged in every week last year, the number has grown, though only to 9.4 million. As proportions, these represent 0.9 per cent and 1.2 per cent of India’s 12 years plus population. However, urban India has shown faster growth in Internet reach – from 2.3 per cent to
3.4 per cent.

The number of individuals who accessed the Internet in the last three months increased marginally from 10.8 million to 13 million in 2006. While 10.8 million of these are in urban India, nearly 1.8 million Internet users reside in rural India. The growth seems slower than expected. The growth of the number of Internet users in urban India is 35 per cent over last year while in rural India this seems to have stagnated.

The Cybercafé is the new access point for Internet as reach of Internet increases, office is no longer the main place of access. As many as 34 per cent of net users now surf from cybercafé and 30 per cent from home. About 20 per cent of Internet users access it from the work-place.

Mobile phones: NRSC notes must now be given their due place as media. Reach of this medium – as measured by the proportion of the population accessing value-added-features (VAS) at least once a week – has grown from 1.1 per cent last year to 2.7 per cent -- translating to nearly 22 million individuals.

Among the fast growing tribe of mobile phone owners, 38 per cent access value added features like downloads, accessing news and cricket scores, SMS etc versus 13.9 per cent last year. The figure is higher at 44 per cent in 42 metros. This means that as an advertising medium, it reaches more than 22 million consumers. As can be expected, the usage levels are much higher among young urban audiences and needs to be closely watched by not only the press but also the TV industry in future. With the impending launch of 3G next year the quality of content that will be delivered to mobile subscribers will make it a force to reckon with.

The fourth estate needs to stay on its toes: If there is one overall conclusion, it is that the press medium must watch emerging media closely. The NRS says that it has the data points to indicate media consumption amongst consumers from all walks of life. It is also worth remembering that, socio-culturally speaking, India is like a couple of dozen countries with a total of sixteen official languages and wide disparities in living standards – the complexity of the Indian media market would rival those of Europe if taken as a whole.