MUMBAI: Dainik Jagran and The Times of India continue to be the most read Hindi and English dailies, according to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) Q4 report, released by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and Hansa Research.
However, breaking the trend from Q3, Dainik Jagran recorded a decrease in its average issue readership (AIR) from 16.46 million in Q3 to 16.41 million in Q4. It saw a negative of 0.3 per cent.
Dainik Bhaskar, meanwhile, continued to be second and recorded an AIR of 14.60 million, down 1.84 per cent, compared to 14.88 million in Q3.
While the top five places did not see any major changes, the top two recorded decrease in AIR while Hindustan, Malayala Manorama and Amar Ujala (third, fourth and fifth position respectively) gained readership.
Maharashtrian daily Lokmat and Tamil publication Daily Thanthi swapped places to land up at No. 7 and 8 respectively. The Tamil daily’s AIR was recorded at 7.5 million while the Marathi publication’s AIR was 7.5 million
Among the English dailies, The Times of India leads with a readership of 7.62 million, an increase of 2 per cent over previous quarter’s AIR of 7.47 million.
While the top six dailies maintain the pecking order from the last quarter, the last four positions have seen some shuffle with The Economic times (AIR 790,000) slipping to No. 8 and Mumbai Mirror (AIR 803,000) climbing to No. 7.
The ninth and tenth positions also saw a change as The Tribune (AIR 585,000) slipped to No. 10 while The New Indian Express (AIR 637,000) settled at No. 9.
The regional dailies also experienced changes in the top ten order. While Lokmat went up a notch to No. 2 with AIR of 7.56 million, Daily Thanthi replaced it at the No. 3 spot with a readership of 7.5 million. Eenadu slipped down the ladder to sixth position with AIR of 5.99 million, propelling Anand Bazar Patrika to fifth spot with a readership of 6.05 million. Tamil daily Dinakaran dropped down to No. 8 at an AIR of 5.22 million while Telugu daily Sakshi bumped up to No. 7 with AIR of 5.3 million.
