Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Good news for newspapers

Later this week the Indian Readership Survey will reveal the soaring nature of India's newspaper industry. A mixture of increased literacy, huge population, and buoyant advertising revenues are a recipe for success. Newspapers are also aided by the fact there is little cut through in this area by the internet beyond the big cities.

There are a total 325 million readers which generated £3.8billion in sales - this from  a country with a literacy rate of only 68 per cent means these figures are set to grow further.

So to individual newspapers. The biggest seller is Dainik Prakashan with a readership just above 16 million while The Times of India - the biggest selling English language newspaper - has an average readership of 7.42 million.

Compare these figures to those of the UK's biggest sellers: Daily Mail, 2.1 million; News of the World 2.7 million; or the liberal intelligentsia's favourite The Guardian, 260,000.

It is often said that owning a newspaper in the UK is the fastrack to the establishment. In India it looks like the fastrack to riches as well.

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