IRS 2019 Q1: AIR grows in absolute numbers, de-growth in terms of percentage of the universe

Unlike the previous survey, MRUC released the AIR numbers on 26 April along with TR but projected the growth in its announcement on the basis of TR only. With the release of 2019 Q1 data, TR witnessed a growth of 4.4% over the previous survey and reached 42.5 crore from 40.7 crore in IRS 2017. The growth was 4.7% in urban with a total readership of 20.2 crore, up from 19.3 crore, and 4.2% in rural with 22.3 crore of TR, up from 21.4 crore.

The total readership stood at 39.4% of the total universe of 107.85 crore in 2019 Q1, 0.5% up from the previous survey over the total universe of 104.6 crore.

MRUC clearly claimed the growth in TR on the basis of the absolute number of readers. In terms of percentage over the universe, the council could not have shown any growth.

The size of the universe is 107,85,43,000 (108 crore) individuals of 12+ years of age, up from 104,60,04,000 (105 crore) in 2017. The current size of the urban universe is 38 crore against 70 crore in rural.

But in the next slide of its presentation, MRUC did not maintain uniformity and showed the growth in other three metrics (AIR, which is yesterday’s recall, three-day recall and seven-day recall) on the basis of percentage over the universe. On this parameter, the readership on the basis of yesterday recall showed a decline of 0.5%, 0.4% on three-day recall and 0.1% on seven-day recall for any dailies.

The AIR of Hindi, English and regional newspapers was 18,01,16,681 (16.7% of universe) in Q1 2019, up from 17,99,12,688 (17.2% of universe) in IRS 2017.

The AIR of Hindi dailies was at 7.66 crore (7.1% of the universe) against 7.53 crore (7.2% of the universe) in 2017. English dailies recorded an AIR of 1.3 crore (1.2% of the universe) in 2019 Q1 against 1.25 crore (1.2% of the universe). The average issue readership of regional dailies was at 9 crore (8.4% of the universe) compared with 9.2 crore (8.8% of the universe) in the previous survey.

In total readership, Hindi dailies grew by 5.68% to record a TR of 18.6 crore, up from 17.6 crore in 2017. For Hindi, the maximum growth came from rural as it added 60 lakh readers to reach 10.6 crore readers, up 6% from 10 crore in the previous survey. In urban, Hindi dailies grew by 5.3% adding 40 lakh readers to reach 8 crore over 7.6 crore in IRS 2017.

English dailies grew by 10.7% to reach a TR of 3.1 crore, up from 2.8 crore out of which 2.6 crore are in urban and 0.5 crore in rural. All the growth came in from urban as the absolute number of readers grew by 13% from 2.3 crore in IRS 2017.

Regional dailies grew by 3.9% and recorded a TR of 21.1 crore, up from 20.3 crore. 2.9% growth came from urban as regional dailies recorded a TR of 10.6 crore in the current survey over 10.3 crore in IRS 2017. 5% growth came from rural to reach 10.5 crore in Q1 2019 from 10 crore in the previous survey.

The penetration of newspapers remains at 39% of the universe with 53% in urban and 32% in rural. The rural penetration has gone up by 1% over the previous survey.

Interestingly, magazines’ penetration has gone up to 6% of the current universe from 5% in the previous survey. The growth again has come from rural which contributes 4% now against 3% in the previous survey while the urban penetration remains stagnant at 9%.

Magazines showed a healthy growth of 11.5% in IRS 2019 Q1 over the previous survey’s results released in IRS 2017. The total readership of magazines across all the languages now stands at 8.7 crore in the current survey compared with 7.8 crore in IRS 2017. Urban markets have a total readership of 4.9 crore in Q1 2019 against 4.5 crore in the previous survey while total readership in rural stood at 3.8 crore against 3.4 crore in 2017.

(Courtesy agencies)