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If only there was some truth in the numbers, family planning experts would have been giving a gala party! According to the latest National Readership Survey, 2006 (NRS, though many would prefer to call it the Notional Readership Survey or the National Ridiculous Survey!), the population of Uttaranchal has declined by 18%. In Ghaziabad, a booming suburb near Delhi, NRS 2006 claims that the population has declined by almost 90%! These are just a few of the outrageous figures issued by NRS, which claims to be a reliable measure of calculating readership figures of newspapers and magazines in India. Some of the best known media houses in the country including Times of India, Hindustan Times, India Today, Amar Ujaala, Rajasthan Patrika and Dainik Jagran, to name just a few, have major complaints against the NRS. For instance, the NRS figures indicate that the readership of Dainik Jagran in Ghaziabad has dropped from 1.66 lakh in 2005 to just about 14,000 in 2006.

Benoy Roy Choudhry, Business Head, Media Marketing of Hindustan Times remarks, “There have been unusual results in NRS 2006, which clearly go against our market circulation figures…NRS should recheck these odd results.” While Roy Choudhry is circumspect, Arvind Kalia, National Marketing Head of Rajasthan Patrika, is outraged. “The industry has raised serious questions about the NRS results this time”, he says.

Normally, no media house would bother to waste time and energy on a deeply flawed survey like NRS. The problem is, a large number of companies and media buyers depend on the readership figures released by the NRS, to decide and finalise advertising campaigns. For a media house in India, advertising is the main source of revenue and such unreliable surveys like NRS can play havoc. Says Varun Kohli of the Hindi daily Amar Ujala, “Tomorrow if my paper doesn’t get good figures, it won’t get good revenues too”. The primary reasons for the growing outrage against the NRS are two fold. The first relates to the outdated and unscientific methodology used to measure readership. The second pertains to the arrogant refusal of NRS officials to acknowledge that there could be a problem. Take the actual survey where researchers allegedly go to respondents’ homes to get readership details and patterns. During the interview, respondents are encouraged to say that they ‘read’ a newspaper or a magazine even if they have flipped through it while waiting for a barber or a dentist. There is no linkage between buying a newspaper or a magazine and its readership! Worse, the questionnaire carried by researchers is too long, complicated, messy and unfriendly.

What is hurting and angering media houses even more than the anomalies and ‘discrepancies’ is the attitude of NRS officials who refuse to accept the stark fact that things have gone wrong. No wonder, there is an increasing demand across the media industry for a more credible and transparent alternative to the discredited NRS!