Indian Newspapers reaches 242 million readers..

Each week, National Readership Survey (NRS) says, the print news media reaches 242 million readers. These enormous numbers, the survey suggests, represent a chain of growth, driven both by expanding literacy and improved living standards..

India newspaper publication began in Calcutta in the 1780's and by 1800 there were several dozen publications in English, with the numbers increasing periodically.

There are approximately 5,525 newspapers in India. Official figures are not readily available, but a conservative estimate would be that there are an additional 4,000 titles published elsewhere in India.

Each week, National Readership Survey (NRS) says, the print news media reaches 242 million readers. These enormous numbers, the survey suggests, represent a chain of growth, driven both by expanding literacy and improved living standards

Broadly, NRS shows that newspaper and magazine readership have continued to grow in both urban and rural areas of the country. During the last 5 years, the percentage of adults who read a newspaper or magazine grew by four percentage points, from 45 to 49.

Assuming a population of 620 million adults over the age of 15, as NRS does, that means well over 25 million people in India have begun to read a newspaper or magazine for the first time in these two years.

However, since NRS based its readership figures entirely on urban residents, without surveying the rural areas, the real growth of print media audiences could in fact be larger than the data at first suggest. While 62 per cent of the 183 million in urban areas read a newspaper or magazine each week, NRS records, only 29 per cent of the 437 million rural residents do so. This lower rural reach was not factored into NRS.

The number of adults who read a daily overall grew by one percentage point from, reaching 42 per cent of all adults or some 260 million people. By contrast, eveningers, popular in urban centres, showed a decline in circulation. But the real growth in the print media was marked by magazines; many adults took to reading a magazine for the first time. Magazine readers as a percentage of all adults rose from 25 per cent in 1997 to 28 per cent, which in absolute terms means there are some 174 million magazine readers today. The growth in magazine audiences was driven by news, general interest and subject-specific publications, while business magazines performed relatively poorly.

The largest publications in the country, true to the findings of earlier NRS surveys, are regional language publications, not their more high-profile English counterparts. Not a single one of the english publications figures as one of the top 10 in the country. (source: allindianewspapers.com)