BCCL needs to make up its mind on the Indian Readership Survey

Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL) needs to freeze on an opinion as far as the Indian Readership Survey is concerned. In a front page story this morning, headlined “All down, HT up, entire media industry foxed,” this is what they say:

“Imagine newspapers with readership lower than their circulation. For some strong publications, the readership is zero — yes, ZERO — in a few big cities. In some cases, shockingly, “illiterates” are reading newspapers. That’s not all — the big surprise is the trend of falling readership across genres, languages and regions. But there’s one media group — Hindustan Times — which has bucked the trend for all its publications. While other English papers have lost readership, including a dramatic drop of 32% for The Hindu, HT has gained handsomely. Most Hindi papers have lost ground, but not HT group’s Hindustan_._ When it comes to readership per copy, a key metric, HT outstrips rivals by far. For example, in Noida and Gurgaon, a copy of HT is being read by an incredible 12-17 readers. That’s next to impossible, say analysts. Just how credible is India’s biggest readership survey — the IRS…”

The IRS was released on 28 January. Details of the survey can be found here .

The morning after the IRS numbers were released, The Times of India front-paged this: “The Times of India’s readership has grown dramatically in Maharashtra. TOI has grown by 30% and now has a combined readership of 26.72 lakh in the state, according to just-released Indian Research Survey data for 2013. The three main editions of Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, along with those in Nashik, Kolhapur and Aurangabad, added 6.13 lakh readers in the past year alone. TOI continues to remain the most-read English daily in India by a massive margin with an average issue readership of 72.53 lakh.”

On an inside page we find this: “Just-released Indian Research Survey data for 2013 shows that Mumbai Mirror, from the TOI stable, has grown 32.4% and leapfrogged to No. 4 position from No. 7 among all English dailies. Mumbai Mirror had an AIR of 10.84 lakh in 2013 compared to 8.19 lakh in IRS Q4 2012.”

The same morning, this is what The Economic Times had to say on the front page. “ET would like to thank its readers for their loyalty: Your newspaper has moved up the rankings and is the sixth most-read English daily — still the only financial paper to figure in the top 10 — according to the new Indian Readership Survey. With an Average Issue Readership of 722,000, ET is behind general news giants such as The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Mumbai Mirror and The Telegraph.”

And this is what Mumbai Mirror said: “Mumbai Mirror has registered the highest growth percentage (32.4%) across all English dailies in India, and is now the country’s fourth-most read English newspaper. According to the findings of the 2013 Indian Readership Survey, Mumbai Mirror is the highest read single-edition English language newspaper in India with ten lakh eighty-four thousand readers. The Times of India retains its top position, followed by the Hindustan Times. At the number three position is The Hindu which has, as per the 2013 IRS, lost six lakh and ninety one thousand readers.”

The IRS numbers were published in January 2014; what has provoked this morning’s front page ET story, more than four months after the release and when nothing new has happened since then?