| These were just a few of the findings contained in
the new research study Sparr conducted by Media Research Users Council
(MRUC). Sparr stands for Sections, Pullouts and Attitudinal Readership
Research. The aim was to provide an understanding of the nuances of
reader's habits towards newspaper pullouts and sections.
The survey was conducted from July - August 2003 for Mumbai with
a sample size of 1920. 100 per cent back checks were done in all
11 dailies and 50 pullouts were surveyed. MRUC will also be releasing
a study on FM Radio in the first quarter of next year.
MRUC's Roda Mehta delivered a presentation saying that daily pullouts
behaved differently from weekly pullouts. An interesting find is
that women are biased towards Marathi pullouts. Not surprisingly
for the TOI among SEC A its edit and international pages
score the highest. Celebrities may be desperate to appear in page
three of Bombay Times. However the survey revealed that while
a third of TOI's readers read the section six times a week
over half read it
less than three times each week.
Another issue relates to the average issue readership versus the
claimed readership. For TOI the AIR is 55 per cent of the
claimed readership. However when you check the pullouts the figure
shoots up. For the Educational Times the figure is 87 per
cent. For Ascent it is an impressive 91 per cent. For Gujarati
publications the AIR is as high as the claimed readership. For Loksatta
all pullouts rank high in popularity among the SEC A group 25+.
The overall business readership for the newspapers surveyed ranges
from 15-42 per cent. It is at its highest for the TOI. The
sports readership ranges from 43-65 per cent. The edit section is
between 24- 46 per cent of the readers.
|
