COUCH POTATOES ON THE RISE

A newspaper baron in the country stunned his editors a few weeks ago by declaring that television was the medium of the future, and he, for one, had stopped reading. The worthy gentleman would have found himself in the company of 20 per cent of a literate urban population which the National Readership Survey-1997 found did not read at all.

The NRS-97 which was released in Mumbai recently found that urban adults were increasingly watching television, listening less to radio and reading as much or little as they did two years ago when the first survey came out.

A consortium of research agencies IMRB, MODE and AC Nielsen carried out the survey on behalf of the National Readership Studies Council to explore the urban readership of 166 daily newspapers and 231 magazines. Trends in television viewership and radio listening were also examined. A total of 1,31,568 adults in 520 towns were covered. besides this, a special study was conducted among the rural literates in Kerala, the only State with total literacy.

In the break-up of consumption of mass media by an urban adult, television viewing hogs 68.8 per cent of the total time a person spends on mass media. On an average, a person spends 13 or more hours per week watching television, that is an additional two hours since 1995. In comparison, reading gets a 16.2 per cent share of the time and radio 15 per cent, the survey says.

On the other hand, it was found that the proportion of individuals who were exclusively exposed to television was very slight while the incidence of newspaper readers who also watched television was the highest. Among the satellite channels, STAR Movies and Discovery were viewed infrequently in the country.

On a generational level, older people spent more time reading than using other mass media. However, the average time a person spent on reading the daily newspaper was 3.7 minutes everyday. Twenty per cent of the literate urban population surveyed admitted that they did not read at all.

Analysing the demographic information, the survey found that the basic structure of the urban population had changed with an increase in the adult population by six per cent since 1995. As of June 1997, an estimated 171.5 million adults in urban India live in 48.6 million homes, which is an average of 3.5 adults per household.

Despite the growth in urban population, it was found that the percentage of regular readers in India has remained more or less the same as during NRS-95 but this time there were obvious qualitative changes in the reading habits of the respondents.

There were no significant changes in the basic composition of the population despite the growth in numbers. The Socio Economic Class (Sec) A and E are growing faster than the average of six per cent over the past two years. For advertisers this spells a latitude for both the premium and regular product and services. Households with an average monthly income of Rs 10,000 plus have doubled. There is today more than one earning member in 48 per cent of all urban homes, while the estimate is marginally higher in Sec E homes.

A finding that is somewhat alarming is that while there is no noteworthy change in the literate population, the graduate class is growing at a slower pace than the others. The non-working segment of the population has risen from 40 to 45 per cent, accounting for 76.6 million who are housewives, retired and not working. Teenagers, a popular target for advertisers and producers of consumer durables, are 25.6 million.

Fifty-nine per cent (101 million) of the adult population claims to read any publication while television continued to increase its following with the numbers exposed to television in an average week touching 134 million. The proportion exposed to any radio station dropped by one-third from 41 per cent to 29 per cent limiting the reach of radio to 50 million adults in urban India. Cinema was accessible to 38 per cent of all adults.

The audience was also divided into main exclusive groups who are exposed to only television versus a combination of press + television; press, television + cinema and so on. The findings were interesting. A solus television campaign would reach only four per cent of Section A versus 25 per cent with a combination of press + television. However, nearly 20 per cent of Section Es can be tapped only through television. Besides the reach of television was increasing. Thirty four million or 69 per cent urban homes now own a television act.

Today, 35 per cent of all television owning homes watch their programmes on a colour television (CTV) sets, accounting for 13 million CTV homes in the urban area. We estimate a number of 35 million television in urban India, in the household segment.

By mid-1997, cable and satellite homes had reached 15 million. This accounts for 45 per cent of all television owning households, a 32 per cent increase over 1995.

Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu/ Pondicherry, Maharashtra/Goa are the top five states where C&S penetration as a percentage of television homes was high. They were followed by Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab/Haryana, Delhi, Bihar and the rest.

By month-end, IMRB rivals ORG-MARG’s Indian Readership Survey should be out. It will be interesting to see how the two compare in their reading of the Indian appetite for infotainment.