Mumbai: The print media is in a growth phase in India and other Asian countries while it is declining in some of the developed countries, N. Ram, Editor in Chief, The Hindu group of publications, said.
Apart from improved purchasing power with people and aggressive entrepreneurship, the excitement caused by political developments has also helped to bring in more readers, Ram told delegates to the Advertising Agencies Association of India diamond jubilee seminar here today.
Lack of political stability is not a negative for newspaper readership; in fact it augurs well for it, he said.
"India has plenty of positive factors that drive circulation," he said. Quoting National Readership Survey (NRS) 2005 statistics, Ram said Dainik Jagran with 21 million readers topped the list. The NRS figures are very heartening for newspapers in India, particularly the numbers emanating from small towns where readership is increasing.
Quoting the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), Ram said three Asian countries were among the top five newspaper markets with China topping the list at 93.5 million copies followed by India at 78.8 million and Japan at 70.4 million copies. The US with 55.6 million copies is at the fourth place, Germany was fifth on the list with 22.1 million copies. There has been an increase in copies sold in China, India and Japan while there has been a decline in the US and German markets.
Though Asian newspaper markets are in a growth phase, Ram warned about trends such as `tabloidisation' and `dumbing down' as has already happened in developed countries. Decline is inevitable unless newspapers make radical changes and connect to their readers.
The impact of the Internet would also have an effect on the circulation of newspapers. The Net is eroding print readership. However, Internet penetration is low in India and cannibalisation of print will not take place soon, he said.
