Readership survey: MRUC told to withdraw report in a day

Decision to give ultimatum to withdraw IRS was taken after a meeting of key INS members in Delhi today

Media Research Users Council (MRUC) will hold a board meeting on  February 4 to decide on its response to an ultimatum from the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) asking it to withdraw its latest Indian Readership Survey (IRS) in 24 hours or face withdrawal of subscription from members. The ultimatum was given after a meeting of key INS members in Delhi on Monday.

The meeting followed a joint statement by publishers of The Hindu, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, The Times of India, India Today, Anandabazar Patrika, Lokmat, Outlook, DNA, Sakshi, Amar Ujala, The Tribune, Bartaman, Aaj Samaj, The Statesman, Mid-Day, Nai Dunia and Dinakaran saying IRS 2013 was “riddled with shocking anomalies, which defy logic and common sense”.

MRUC, which changed the vendor for the 2013 survey from Hansa Research to Nielsen, had earlier got a deadline till Monday from INS. MRUC declined to comment on the matter.

Complaints
A most startling anomaly in the survey is that many publications are reported to have no readership in cities where they have editions but relatively high number of readers where these publications have just launched or have minuscule presence according to circulation figures.

For example, The Hindu Business Line is reported to have thrice as many readers in Manipur as in Chennai, where it is headquartered. Besides, according to IRS 2013, in Chennai, Coimbatore, Indore, Jabalpur, Madurai, Meerut, Ujjain and Varanasi, only women read financial dailies. The IRS data also claims unemployed students have an income of Rs 50,000-75,000 while those working part-time don’t earn at all.

IRS 2013 was released on January 29 after a gap of a year. Earlier, the survey was released quarterly. This year, the technical committee changed the method to make the survey more robust and accurate.

Some blatant anomalies in IRS 2013:

Every major newspaper in Andhra Pradesh, irrespective of language, has de-grown by 30 to 65 per cent.

English language readership in Tamil Nadu has decreased by 38 per cent.

There are similarly wild swings at the city level. Mumbai shows a 20.3 per cent growth in overall English readership, while Delhi (a faster-growing city overall on all macro indices) shows a drop of 19.5 per cent.

Hitavada, the leading English newspaper of Nagpur with a certified circulation of over 60,000, doesn’t appear to have a single reader now!

The Hindu Business Line has thrice as many readers in Manipur as in Chennai.

While Punjab has lost a whopping one-third of all its readers in just a year since the last IRS, neighbouring Haryana has grown by 17 per cent.