History National Readership Survey (NRS) Brought out first in 1971, the NRS was conducted to yield readership

data instead of circulation data. The second NRS was published in 1978; the third in 1983, the fourth in 1990, fifth in 1994, 1995 and NRS VI had also come to the market in the early 1998. NRS VI has the distinction of being an industry survey as it is sponsored by publishing advertisers and advertising agencies. The aims of the NRS among others are the following: To provide information that can be used for buying and selling of advertising space in the print media. To provide media users with data on comparative levels vis--vis TV/radio, cinema and video. The NRS covers readership estimates for various selected publications, viewership of TV, video and cinema, listenership ratio, duplication between publications and inter-media duplications. In 2009 talks of a merger between the two foremost readership surveys in India culminated into the making of a new print measurement organisation in the country, the Readership Studies Council of India. After the mergerwhich was finalized in late 2011, NRS continued to be published as IRS(Indian Readership Survey) which pays special attention to print media.

Ownership Pattern The National Readership Survey (NRS) was initially owned by The National Readership Studies Council (NRSC) which was responsible for conducting surveys on all forms of media in India, specially the print media. It consisted of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), Advertising Associations of India (AAAI) and the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC). Since 2009, the Indian Readership Surveys (IRS) owners The Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and the National Readership Surveys (NRS) owner The National Readership Studies Council had been in talks with each other for merging. The merger was finally completed on 20th September 2011 in the annual general meeting (AGM) of the MRUC and a new body for print media research was created. It was called the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI). The Audit Bureau of Circulation completed the process by signing on the agreement in its AGM a week after that. The ABC had been fronting the NRS on behalf of the National Readership Studies Council. The new research entity, RSCI is a partnership of equals where both the organizations which constitute it are equal shareholders. ABC and MRUC agreed that ten members each from both the organizations would constitute the Board of Directors of the RSCI. MRUC Chairman HormusjiCama became the Chairman of the RSCI. The NRS is currently funded by the RSCI completely.

The new readership survey under the administration of the RSCI continued to be called the Indian Readership Survey due to its brand value and the credible image it had created for itself in the print media industry in the last many years. However, the methodologies of the new survey were reformed and refined to add more value and make the entire process more accurate, which had been the biggest drawback of the NRS earlier. In 2012, it gave Nielsen India the mandate to do the IRS, instead of Hansa Research. Under the new owners, the research methodologies were upgraded and were made more in tune with the times. Significance of the National Readership Survey in Media Studies The NRS surveys for newspaper readership on an All-India basis. It, with the help of its figures and findings, reflects the circulation of each newspaper publication amongst the various demographic audiences. The macro-research done by the NRS is also a key tool in analyzing the reach of each mass medium among the audiences in rural and urban India. For newspaper owners, it is especially helpful as it helps them to gauge the level of reader engagement. In 2006, for the first time in India the NRS inculcated, within its survey, the various topics in a newspaper that are of maximum interest to the reader. It found that apart from news and politics, sports also garners a lot of interest to the readers. This was followed by films and TV serials. It also covers information on products in about 100 categories to present both readership as well as consumption patterns in the country. The NRS is one of the largest surveys in India thats projects the news consuming habits of the population. Readership information, collected in the NRS, from a cross- section of the population presents an objective picture of the readership and other consumption habits of the population. It surveys households to capture media and product ownership and then creates linkages between the two sets of data collected. It gives information on the different vehicles within the same medium. For publications, for example, it gets the number of readers, type of readers in demographic terms, the spread of these readers and lifestyle patterns of the readers like product ownership and consumption in rural and urban India. The data presented by the NRS is of crucial importance to advertisers who rely solely on the circulation or paid sales figures of news publications. The NRS findings become the only basis for the allocation of the media budgets. To that end, the NRS helps various product companies in the market to make an informed decision about choosing a publication that would garner the most visibility for their advertisement. The rural and urban readership indicators are also beneficial to advertisers who have a niche target audience for their products. When it comes to advertising in magazines, the quality of readers as revealed by the findings of the NRS, play a key role in market segmentation and product placement for advertisers. Studies like the NRS not only give details about the number of readers but also the quality of readers. This is also beneficial to advertisers since they get an overall view of the quality of readership that each publication has. It subsequently helps them in determining the economic class of their target audience and then advertise accordingly. It also gives the duplication of

readers with other competitive publications, which means that it indicates how two leading newspapers can have the same reader. The NRS is also instrumental in keeping tabs on the standing of each newspaper publication, which is of prime importance in media studies. The final result has indicators to denote the rise and fall in circulation of newspapers and magazines in English as well as regional languages. This makes media owners, newspaper publishers and news editors more aware of their popularity amongst readers and also keeps alive the competition The circulation figures of the survey are also helpful to publication owners who want to diversify more in the media industry by buying more publications than the ones they already own. They are equipped with the position of each Indian newspaper in the print media industry, as also their credibility and popularity. Based on the NRS findings, they are thus able to analyze and make an informed choice when it comes to investing their money in a particular publication.

Recent Figures (IRS 2013) The findings, projected to population estimates as per The Census of India 2011 for the first time, are as under:

Credibility of the NRS The normal sample size of the NRS is 2, 84,373 households which is the highest in the world. The survey maintains international standards so as to avoid any form of impartiality or bias. The stratified random sampling process that it uses to survey the samples is used in many other countries. It also uses the technique to rotate the newspaper masthead cards shown to the sample population so that the pattern of the survey is not repeated over different households. The frequency question i.e., the question about how often the newspaper is read, and the recency question i.e., the one about when the newspaper was read last, are the same as in many other countries. The basis of arriving at the Average Issue Readership (AIR) figures is widely followed across the world. In case of limited resources, a survey is only required to choose a sample that is representative of the universe. It has been found that the NRS results are viewed with a 25% +/- margin of error and a 95% confidence level. Thus, if one does the survey 100 times, then one would get the same results 95 times with the maximum limit of 25% as the margin of error. In case of publications with a higher readership, there is a smaller margin of error when the sample readings are projected to the population. Three research agencies, IMRB International, ACNielsen-ORG MARG and TNS Mode, are involved in the fieldwork for the research.

Methodology A stratified multi-stage sampling procedure was used for the National Readership Survey. Administrative districts constituted the primary stratum for sampling. All the towns with over 2-lakh population, those with publication centers of dailies in the district were included purposely. The rest were a predetermined number of towns within a district selected using PPS methodology (Probability Proportional to Population Size of each town). The selection of respondents for the survey was made using a two-step procedure. A sample of voters was drawn from the electoral rolls in clusters of a predetermined size; then those addresses were selected, where voters who were currently or formerly residing. The adults of these households participated in the readership interviews. The selection of publications was finalized by a committee, which comprised a cross-section of media planners and media directors from leading advertising agencies. The publications were selected on the basis of the Minimum Circulation Criterion. The measurement criterion of readership was ascertained using the Masthead method. A booklet which had the reproductions of mastheads of various publications was used for aided recall of respondents. The average issue readership of a publication was estimated by determining the number of respondents who read any issue within a specified time interval = publication interval, i.e., daily, yesterday, weekly-7 days, fortnightly-14 days, monthly-4 weeks. Now having being defunct for a year1IRS carries its legacy on. The survey published by them on December 31, 2013, has been the centre of much controversy. The radical change in methodology and a correspondent change in the findings which pass off as anomalies in the survey, have resulted in such reaction. The Press Release published by The Media Research Users Council (MRUC) stated The RSCI today published the IRS for the period ending December 31, 2013. This release is the first since the new vendor, Nielsen, was appointed in early 2013. The new IRS has several features that distinguish it from the previous edition. After a number of court cases and public statements by magazine and newspaper organizations regarding the irregularity and the ridicules findings of the survey, MRUC decide to defend the methodology of its survey and offerring to respond to every single query posed by subscribers. IRS 2013 covered a sample of more than 235,000 households, across India. The sample was spread across urban (160,000 households) and rural India (75,000 households).
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Several features distinguish the new IRS from the old edition. The study was done via the dual screen computer aided personal interview (in which both the questioner and the questioned see the questions on screens). In the past, the majority of interviews were conducted in the traditional way with a paper and pen. The duration of the interview was also reduced from over an hour to less than 30 minutes to eliminate interview fatigue.