Print will remain relevant

In what comes as good news, the Print story continues to grow in India, while active Internet users has taken a significant jump, according to the latest Indian Readership Survey (IRS) data released by Media Research Users Council (MRUC).
From now on, IRS would send out quarterly updates that the industry was expecting for several years. The IRS Q1 2019 report is a rolling average of three quarters of 2017 and Q1 2019; sample size is 3.24 lakh households.
“This is the world's largest face to face multimedia and consumption study…these findings are in line with the market truths and a testimony of IRS' rigourous processes and quality control norms,” according to MRUC Chairman.
According to the available data, the total number of print readers have increased from 40.7 to 42.4 crore – an addition of 1.8 crore. The growth has been equal in rural and urban areas. Besides, the growth has been seen across languages.
Internet usage has increased with India now having a total of 384 million active Internet users. The MRUC also found that the online newspaper readership too has shown an increase.
As far as magazines are concerned, readership has shown increase from 7.8 crore to 8.7 crore – an increase of 0.9 crore.
This IRS exercise has its own credibility parameters that have used technology to infuse a totally new standard of field controls. The resultant data is robust and representative of the diversity and heterogeneity of our wonderful country. Overall Media consumption and Print in particular is vibrant and growing. Most stakeholders should be encouraged with this snapshot of how India is consuming Media and Print.
The report is extremely satisfying for the print media that has been facing survival challenges due to huge cost of production and circulation particularly for medium and small publications. The Government advertisement policy that has been highly discriminatory against the medium and small newspapers has been further flouted brazenly, without any check or accountability, by the its officials to ensure sure death of genuine small and medium publications on its panel.
Now, with the release of this round of IRS, the common taunting remarks of the Government officials questioning the relevance of the print media will be a modest answer.