BackMuch ado about readership numbers
There are discrepancies in the IRS and publishers and MRUC would do well to put their heads together and address the real issues
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All readership surveys are prone to discrepancies.
It’s done. I’ve said it. It’s controversial, but it’s also true.
The National Readership Survey (NRS) had its share of discrepancies, so did the old Indian Readership Survey (IRS), although, on the face of it, none seem to have had the same magnitude of discrepancies as the new Indian Readership Survey does. This survey, the Indian Readership Survey 2013, now overseen by a body created by the merger of the NRS and the old IRS, would probably not be a readership survey if it didn’t have some discrepancies.
There will be discrepancies because of what is measured (familiarity, to put it bluntly) and how it is measured (with no effort to validate the readership), but that’s the way readership surveys are conducted. Not surprisingly, most readership surveys are influenced by such factors such as the age of a publication (the results of most readership studies show a distinct legacy effect).
Indeed, many of the issues over which 18 publishers have rejected IRS 2013, the first to be done under the aegis of a new body, and conducted by a new research agency (Nielsen India) using a new methodology, are not new. Yes, I know the old IRS and the new one aren’t really comparable but a mere avowal of that is not going to make anyone stop comparing the two.
There have been enough instances of newspapers having a higher circulation (even one certified by the Audit Bureau of Circulation) than readership. Some of these are discrepancies. Others may not be. Given the unique dynamics of the Indian newspaper market, vendors may sometimes stand to make more money by paying the low cover price of a paper (all cover prices are low), pocketing their commission, and then selling the paper as waste to a recycler. The same applies for subscribers too (several newspapers are available for less than a rupee every published day).
In the Mint newsroom, we’ve always treated readership surveys with some measure of balance—they are important and relevant because readership is the currency that decides which publications figure in the media plans of advertisers; but they aren’t entirely accurate; and they are no measure of journalistic excellence.
Mint has done well according to the latest readership survey, growing its readership significantly from a little over 200,000 to a little over 300,000 although the pecking order of financial dailies, by readership, remains unchanged and what it has been ever since Mint entered the readership surveys. I wrote about the numbers in a Page 1 note (which I always do, irrespective of whether Mint’s readership falls or rises). And Mint’s writers have faithfully covered the ongoing fracas between publishers and the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) that conducted the study, presenting both sides of the story.
Mint’s writers have also reported on the ways in which MRUC and Nielsen believe they have made this survey better: the use of a double screen for computer-aided personal interviews (which means the respondent is choosing the titles she is familiar with on-screen); the use of Census 2011 as the base instead of Census 2001; no manual interventions after the interview; adequate validation; and an attempt to reduce both interviewer and respondent fatigue (I’ve paraphrased a release from the council for this).
The process itself was overseen by a technical committee that included representatives from many of the publications that are now up in arms.
Yet, there’s no denying the discrepancies. Nor their magnitude.
I see a trend in the findings. Many of the older brands have lost out (which means the survey has succeeded in diluting the legacy effect). And brands that are more active digitally seem to have gained.
Did the older surveys exhibit the same discrepancies, and was there some intervention after the interview stage, to reduce the magnitude of these?
I have no way of knowing, and the agencies responsible for conducting the older surveys are likely to deny that there was.
And is the magnitude of these discrepancies glaring in the new survey because there was no intervention after the interviews?
Irrespective of the reason, and like I’ve said before, there are discrepancies and publishers and the MRUC would do well to put their heads together and address the real issues (rather than walking out of the survey because that sets a bad precedent for anyone unhappy with the finding of the readership survey). And part of it involves a serious discussion about what needs to be measured.
In the Mint newsroom, we believe that the primary readership, especially of business publications, has moved online. The good news is that the science of measuring online readership is much more advanced, down to the level of individual stories—and that can only help the cause of both publishers and advertisers.
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