Delhi's duelling dailies

 In the latest round of tussles between India’s two top English dailies, the Times of India and the Hindustan Times, the two have embarked on a publicity overdrive to prove that each is Numero Uno in the market for English newspapers in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR).

Delhi is the only urban agglomeration on the planet from where as many as sixteen English daily publications are printed and distributed. But the market is highly skewed or oligopolistic because the top two dailies account for roughly three-fourths of the total market.

The Times of India, the world's most widely circulated English daily, is a "cry baby", claimed the Hindustan Times. An HT mailer that popped into the inbox of these writers on Labour Day, tried some verse: "They can crib, they can cry. They, unfortunately, can’t change the numbers".

The claim: HT had an overall readership of 23,00,000 and continued to be No. 1 in the Delhi-NCR;  that the newspaper was on top of the league, according to at least fourteen readership surveys and that the circulation of the publication was 40 per cent ahead of its closest competitor, in this case, the ToI.

Prompt came the counter from the ToI: the advertisers in HT had been "shortchanged", it claimed, adding that the publication was inflating its circulation figures by counting 2,50,000-odd copies of HT 2 Min, a scaled-down, 12-page version of main paper that does not carry supplements such as HT City, HT Estates and the Sunday colour supplement of HT, Brunch. 

The TOI mailer listed some 45 advertisements in the New Delhi edition of HT and the HT City supplement, dated 28 April, that were not carried in HT 2 Min. "This means, 23% of HT’s copies printed in NCR (2.5 lakh copies of HT 2 Min) might have missed your ad," the mailer claimed.

This was also the drift of the e-mailers sent out by the ToI on two previous days. Rahul Kansal, executive president, brand function, Times of India told the media website exchange4media.com that HT 2 Min was allegedly a "scam product" since it hardly carried any advertisements of the main paper but represented about 25 per cent of the total circulation of Hindustan Times.

A similar mailer was issued by the HT, alleging that its rival was inflating circulation figures. Both mailers were "issued in the advertiser’s interest". 

According to the HT mailer, on 29 April, the ToI's NIE (Newspaper in Education) supplement -- accounting for some 20 per cent of the ToI’s circulation or 1,90,000-odd copies -- did not carry any of the advertisements published in the main edition of the TOI and its Delhi Times supplement. In effect, what the HT was alleging is that its rival was inflating figures by that many copies.

This latest round in the battle between the two rivals began when the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2014 was released in March. Nationally, the ToI is the only English daily to make it to the top ten. When one looks at all-India figures, among English dailies, the ToI has a readership close to 76,00,000 followed by the HT with a readership of about 45,00,000. 

The English dailies do not lead nationwide rankings which are led by the Hindi heavyweights, Dainik Jagran (with readership of 1.67 crore), Hindustan (about 1.48 crore) and Dainik Bhaskar (about 1.39 crore) and followed by the biggies from the south, Malayala Manorama(close to 88 lakh) in Malayalam and Daily Thanthi (82 lakh) in Tamil.

While the HT is basing its claims on the figures provided in IRS 2014, the ToI has used the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) certificate for the July-December 2014 period while citing the circulation numbers of HT's Delhi edition.

The IRS, conducted by the Media Research Users' Council (MRUC) and the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI) across the country, is characterised by a large sample size and provides extensive demographic details and consumption patterns. For example, the 2013 survey used a sample size of more than 2,00,000 people across 32 states and Union Territories, 95 cities and 92 districts. 

The ABC data, on the other hand, contains only the circulation numbers of publications. As is common knowledge, circulation (number of copies printed) and readership (number of people reading) figures are different. Each copy of a publication may be read by more than one person, depending on the frequency and popularity of the publication, and that is what a readership survey like the IRS seeks to capture. 

This difference was sought to be emphasised by the HT. Another mailer issued on 30 April by the newspaper, this time taking the war to the Mumbai editions of the Times group, claimed that Mumbai Mirror was a tabloid supplement of the TOI and was bundled along with main paper. Despite a dated claim of higher circulation copies, the TOI had a much lower readership than HT, or so the latter would have us believe.