NEW DELHI, September 4: India's ranking as the second largest newspaper market in the world also has a flipside to it. In terms of percentage of reach (of newspapers), it lags way behind developed countries.
The gap between India and leading countries on this count would depend on which source you would like to go by World Press Trends 2005 (which draws on the National Readership Survey 2002 primarily for its numbers on this), the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2005 or the National Readership Survey (NRS) 2005. Each way, nevertheless, the result would be the same India lags behind in terms of percentage of population buy newspapers.
The Norwegians and the Japanese remain the world's greatest newspaper buyers with 651 and 644 sales per thousand population each day respectively. Finland comes next with 522 followed by Sweden with 489. The operative word here is "buyers" and not "readers". WPT 2005 gives the reach of the Press among urban adults as 46 per cent. The figures for India may not be comparable with those worldwide, but trends are unmistakable.
According to NRS 2005 itself, there is still significant scope for growth, since there are as many as 314 million people who can read and understand a particular language but do not read any publication. Affordability of newspapers and magazines is not seen as a constraint since 21 million of these literate non-readers belong to the upscale SEC A and B segments.
While the circluation figures for both dailies and non-dailies increased in 2004 over the previous year, the number of titles actually decreased marginally. The circulation of dailies increased from 31,410,000 in 2003 to 33,930,000 in 2004. The circulation of non-dailies increased from 8,707,000 in 2003 to 14,920,000 in 2004. On the other hand the number of registered titles of dailies dropped from 412 in 2003 to 412 in 2004. The number of registered titles of non-dailies dropped 297 in 2003 to 287 in 2004. Figures, in this case, only pertain to members of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS). Official figures from the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) are hopelessly outdated.
Advertising revenue for newspapers increased by 15.65 per cent from Rs 52,020 million in 2003 to Rs 60,159 million in 2004. in the 200-2004 period, the increase was 36.14 per cent. The ad spend as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GD) has remained more or less constant over the years. It was 0.34 per cent in 2000, 0.36 per cent in 2001, 0.36 per cent in 2002, and 0.35 per cent in 2003.
The advertising expenditure growth registered a 9.1 per cent growth in 2003 over the previous year going up from Rs 89,295 million to Rs 97,415 million. The highest growth in recent times was in 2000 when there was an 18.8 per cent growth over the previous year. Television still has the maximum share with Rs 41,897 million, followed by newspapers (Rs 37,659 million), and magazines (Rs 7,713 million).
The advertising expenditure on newspapers was expected to grow to Rs 56,100 million in 2004 to Rs 59,500 million in 2005, to Rs 62,375 million in 2006 to Rs 67,150 million in 2007 almost an 80 per cent growth in the 2003-2007 period. On the other hand, the advertising expenditure on magazines was expected to grow to Rs 9,900 million in 2004 to Rs 10,500 million in 2005 to Rs 10,625 million in 2006 to Rs 11,850 million in 2007 a little more than 50 per cent.
