Growth trends in the Indian print media

BY ANKITA PANDEY| IN Media Business | 10/05/2017

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC-India) issued a press release on May 8, 2017 highlighting the growth of print media: “2.37 crore copies added in the last 10 years."

During 2013-15, Indian print media not only registered an absolute and significant growth in the number of publications, but also a substantial increase in circulation (Table 1).

This is unlike other major democracies in the West, where circulation dropped across the board and the number of publications stagnated or decreased in all but one case (Table 2). The drop in circulation of print media in the West is driven by stagnating or declining population and much faster growth of digital media. In contrast, India’s population and literacy are still increasing and internet penetration remains weak.

Globally, India continues to be one of the few growth markets from print media. However, within the country print media is likely to grow at the slowest rate among other comparable industries such as radio, TV, etc. Print media was the second largest industry in this sector, behind only TV. Projections suggest that while print will remain the second largest industry, its share in the sector will drop from about 25 per cent at present to about 18 per cent in 2021.

Projections about advertising revenues, an important measure of health of industries in this sector, tell a similar story. Advertising revenues of print media are likely to grow at a much slower rate than other industries.

The robust growth of the Indian print media with respect to most other countries is to a large driven by the growth in Hindi-speaking North India. Like in the past years, Hindi print media and the northern region again registered the highest growth in the country. Hindi-speaking areas have a higher population growth rate and their literacy rates have begun to pick up only in the last two decades. So, these areas are witnessing significantly higher growth compared to the South where population is not growing as fast and literacy levels reached high level as early as the 1990s.

Hindi publications registered highest annual growth followed by Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. So, Hindi newspapers not only enjoy larger circulation, but are also growing at a faster rate.

Half of the top ten newspapers by circulation are published in Hindi. Rest of the newspapers among the top ten include two publications in Malayalam and one each in Telugu, Tamil, and English. The average circulation of the Hindi newspapers among the top ten is nearly double that of other non-English language newspapers in this category.

In sum, India’s print media is likely to continue to register robust growth compared to other major democracies because its population is growing and it has not yet achieved universal literacy. However, within the country is likely to steadily lose ground to digital media.

 Ankita Pandey is an independent researcher based in Bengaluru.