ToI at No1 spot in English daily, says readership survey

According to results of the second round of the Indian Readership Survey for 2009, the total readership has come out to be a huge positive, reports CNBC-TV18’s Ekta Batra.

Here is a verbatim transcript.

It is sort of status-quo. The total readership however is positive—it is increased in Hindi and English segment. Times of India (TOI) remains the number 1 newspaper in the English daily whereas the Dainik Jagran of Jagran Prakashan reigns amongst the Hindi daily. In terms of Hindi, Dainik Jagran maintained its leadership position in UP and it gained a lot of ground in Delhi, in the NCR region in Punjab and Uttaranchal.

Hindustan Times which is HT Media’s Hindi flagship retained its position at the third spot and it successfully maintained its leadership position in Bihar and Jharkhand as well. Hindustan Times retained its Number 2 spot in the English daily segment. It however lost out in terms of leadership in the Delhi region to TOI and the readership in the Mumbai market also declined. So it’s a bit of negative news for Hindustan Times.

The Deccan Chronicle of DCHL came in at the fourth spot. In terms of analyst, what they say is that the market growth is basically fuelled by increase in additions which we saw. For example TOI launched its Chennai addition and Hindustan Times launched its addition in the Uttaranchal market. So basically that sort of growth has also been because of the launches of these additions. However, capex has been on hold for the second half of 2009. So, therefore the first half of the 2010 survey could actually see a decline in readership.