The survey notes that the number of C&S homes has increased from 49.1 million in in the previous R15 (January 2005 to December 2005) survey to 51.2 million in the latest R16 one. The total number of TV homes in India has grown from 90 million to 91.9 million. The total TV viewing audience in the country meanwhile, has grown from 430.7 million to 437.8 million.

As has been the trend in the recent past, the IRS numbers are far more conservative than those thrown up by the National Readership Studies Council's (NRSC) findings of the National readership Survey (NRS) 2006. According to the NRS 2006 findings (released in end-August 2006), the number of C&S homes has increased from 61 million in 2005 to 68 million this year. NRS 2006 showed that there are 112 million TV homes in India compared with 108 million last year.

If there is one common thread running through the IRS findings, it is that the explosion in media offerings is leading to increasing casualness in consumption and therefore a concommitemt reduction in stickiness. Viewers are cutting back on time and frequency in consumption.

There is an overall dispersion in media consumption. More media is being consumed, but time spent has gone down. This is fairly consistent with the changes in urban lifestyles where traveling, socialising, maintenance all eat into leisure time.

*More media is being consumed
*It is being consumed more casually than before
*With lesser frequency
*And lesser time being devoted

This is the case with both TV and Print. Both are experiencing a churn in their relationship with media consumers. On the one hand, there is an explosion in media vehicles, both TV and Print. On the other hand, audiences have really got busy and are compromising on media consumption - in terms of time as well as frequency. They are sharing time across media.

What this is resulting in is that regular viewers are giving way to occasional viewers. The number of channels watched yesterday increased to 2.2 suggesting higher surfing. While on the other hand, a decline in the number of channels watched in the last one week just suggests further fragmentation.

*Declining stickiness
*Polarisation in frequency of viewing
*Overall time spent - a downward trend
*Audience skew towards lower time slabs

10 Lakhs=1 million

News & Current Affairs is the fastest growing genre on TV. At 31 per cent reach in the population, it has the highest penetration by genre.

While News and CA audiences have grown at a faster pace, dailies have grown much more in terms of size - 55 million vs 51 million.

Media proliferation has provided more consumption opportunities. But the consumer is time-constrained. He is cutting back on consumption within the medium, as reflected in the lowering of duplication. But is adding on another medium, as reflected in the increased inter-media duplication.

He is also cutting back on time and frequency. And clearly moving towards casualness in consumption.

Quality news and information available more than before through means other than newspapers
Consumption of news not restricted to newspapers alone
TV and Internet serve the news-seekers immediacy
While TV News channels provide specific styles
Internet is a on-demand medium

The great news here for all news media owners is that this increased appetite for news is fuelling readership growth as well so it is not as if TV is eating into print but that both are growing and expanding.

Readership has grown in absolute numbers, led by Dailies
*But the AIR Reach has reached a plateau:
*Regular reading giving way to casual reading
*Decline in average number of titles read and a gravitation towards reading a single title, within a language & periodicity
*All this leading to decline at vehicle-level readership, but keeping the AIR constant at an aggregate level

Dainik Jagran has the highest readership in the country with 18.19 million readers, followed by Dainik Bhaskar with 13.48 million readers.

Among English newspapers, The Times of India leads with 6.92 million readers, followed by hindustan times with 3.5 million. As before, The Times of India is the only English daily among the top 10 publications.

In conclusion, the challenge in front of media is to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news, not in one place but across different geographies, different genres and different platforms.

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