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At a time when newspaper companies across developed economies are struggling to understand how best to reach their readers, their Indian counterparts can afford to sit smugly. For now! Sample some of the findings from NRS 2005: Time spent watching TV in urban India in the period 2002 and 2005 has seen no growth but the time spent in reading has seen an increase from 30 minutes a day to 39 minutes daily, in the last three years. The reader base for dailies has increased from 155 million in 2002 to 176 million in 2005, an increase of about 14 per cent in the last three years.
In contrast, newspaper circulation trends in developed markets of America and Europe have a gloomy story to tell. Newspapers have had to deal with the digital onslaught of information available on the net, on one's mobile phone, on the television, radio, on handheld devices and basically on every conceivable piece of technology available in the market today.
These were some of the issues discussed at the International Newspaper Marketing Association's (INMA) global forum held in Mumbai recently. INMA is a not for profit organisation, established in 1930, with the purpose of exploring current marketing practices in the newspaper industry today. The forum featured international speaker members of INMA worldwide who shared their perspective on the challenges facing the print media industry in their respective countries.
According to statistics presented at the forum, circulation of paid daily newspapers circulated in mature western markets is down 7.6 per cent since 1994. In contrast, emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia are experiencing high circulation growth.
As Earl J. Wilkinson, Executive Director, INMA, recalls with good humour, of his visit to one of the many newspaper offices in India while he was here, "Our board met here in Mumbai this week, which basically comprised of my colleagues from Europe, North America, Latin America and South Pacific. They were sitting on the other side of the table from Indian newspaper executives and they are hearing all this optimism and this growth in circulation and readership markets, growth in mobile telephony, growth in internet, growth in advertising and I think they were all a little jealous."
The Internet Boom!
The Internet has single-handedly managed to shake the newspaper industry out of its sense of complacency, at least globally. Even in the Indian context, a bulk of classified advertising, the mainstay of most newspapers has been moving to the web. Matrimony and jobs are two big categories in India that have seen a huge growth online.
An interesting insight offered by Marti Buscaglia, President and Publisher, Duluth News-Tribune, USA, from research conducted by her company Knightridder was that although a large percentage of print loyalists checked for news online (59 per cent), only a small percentage of them (about 18 per cent) actually accessed their daily newspaper's website for news. What this suggests is that no one media is enough to satisfy the information needs of consumers today.
According to statistics brought out by Buscaglia, in 2004, consumers spent more time with media than they did sleeping or working and as online access speeds increase, time spent with traditional media has also declined considerably. Content on the net has been mostly limited to e-commerce content or repackaged offline content. But of late, online users are devoting an increasing percent of their time to acquiring content online. This would explain the recent online media activity with Dow Jones acquiring MediaWatch in 2004, New York Times acquiring About in 2005 and Washington Post acquiring Slate in 2004. In addition to this, CBS News and CBS Interactive created their own 24-hour online channel while Yahoo! Entertainment formed their 24-hour news room.
To read the entire story, buy a copy of Impact Advertising and Marketing magazine dated Nov 21-27