The National Readership Survey published in September 2006 revealed the erosion of print readership figures across daily newspapers and  The National Readership Survey published in September 2006 revealed the erosion of print readership figures across daily newspapers and magazines. Although there was a slight increase in the readership of daily newspapers to 222 million in 2006 from 216 million in 2005, overall magazine readership declined to 68 million in 2006 from 75 million in 2005. The Indian language dailies showed a significant increase in readership from 91 to 200 million while the English dailies' readership stagnated at 21 million and the single English daily that was among the top circulations in the previous year fell out of the top ten.

The NRS survey Round I figures made public in April 2007 further establish the erosive trend in print periodical readership. Nine of the top ten newspapers lost readership in 2006 from 3.31 to 12.2 per cent with one daily gaining an undisclosed amount of readership! None of the English dailies now figure in the top ten with readership of the top three English language dailies declining from 2 to 14 per cent. Moreover, the NRS Round 1 of 2007 indicates a steeper decline in magazine readership with the top ten magazines declining from 6.14 per cent to 24.4 per cent.

Although there is always discussion about the respective reliability of ABC circulation and NRS readership figures, respected publishers no longer deny that the readership figures have a legitimate methodology and the decline in readership is in direct synch with the decline in print circulations.

The circulations of major magazines are declining with major groups such as Living Media and Delhi Press having recently opted out of the ABC circulation surveys but in the fragmented market, niche magazines continue sprouting if not yet decisively thriving. Industry insiders attribute the new start-ups partly to a natural segmentation of the market – saying that if publishers can demonstrate their reach to a specific readership, then advertisers and media planners are ready to listen.

In the past couple of years we have been writing about the wave of new magazines – tall and short and thick and thin – gold, bright, red and blue — they come in all shapes and sizes. Amongst them are the numerous glamour slicks – Vogue, Maxim, Marie Claire, and the niche mags for autos, travel, sports, golf, design, motor bikes, photography, health, wealth, invention, redemption and brand extension.

The mags are for the most part local enterprises, with some licensed titles, others joint ventures and in the odd case, a wholly foreign-owned non news publishing brand. There is no let up to the new magazine boom that started in the beginning of 2006 and in the past two years and printers have reacted with numerous second-hand heatset web offset presses, in addition to several new press installations with at least one more on order. New Komori heatsets have come in to Bangalore and Hyderabad and the new Goss M600D that Thomson ordered last year has just been installed in their new Aeroli plant.