Much like is the case with any aspect of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 R2, the language wise leadership trends on the average issue readership (AIR) numbers, too, do not throw any surprises. Indian language publications that have reigned as the leaders in their respective segments continue to hold on to their numbers. exchange4media takes a closer look at the dailies and the periodicals that are leading the charts in their respective languages. Even as the decline trend is pervasive in these numbers too, a few interesting examples comes in cases where in some language publications, dailies have dropped, and magazines have grown.
Bird's eye view of the different language publications
Assamese daily Asomiya Pratidin has increased in readership, and so has the leading magazine in the language - Bismoi. Most of the other magazines and dailies have declined. Bengali publications have not been as lucky, and all the top players here - both dailies and magazines - have seen a decline in their readership. Ananda Bazar Patrika in dailies and Karmashetra in magazines have held on to the top slots that they were seen in, in the previous rounds of data as well.
Gujarati readership still has some good news with quite a few players registering a readership increase. The leading daily Gujarat Samachar and leading weekly Chitralekha have grown in their AIR. Amongst the Hindi players, the top seeds have lost out on numbers. Kannada publications, too, see a decline trend, and both Vijay Karnataka and Sudha have lost in overall AIR.
Malayalam publications have shown a decline in both its dailies and magazines. Malayala Manorama and Vanitha are the leading daily and magazine, respectively, in this genre.
An interesting aspect that came across in Marathi publications, which was seen in Kannada publications as well, was that in the top order, there are magazines in these two languages that have grown, whereas all dailies have declined. Daily Sakal and Griha Shobha lead in these languages' publications. Among Oriya publications, too, magazines have grown, while the dailies have shrunk. At a time, when the general trend seen in the domain is the reverse, these trends do auger well for the Oriya publications. Leading Oriya daily Sambad has dropped, while Saptahik Samay, the leading Oriya weekly, has grown.
Ajit, the leading Punjabi daily, has also shown decline from the previous years.
The pattern of dailies growing and magazines dropping is seen in Tamil publications as well. Daily Thanthi is the leading Tamil daily, while Kumudam is the leading magazine.
Eenadu, the number one Telugu daily, has dropped. So has Swati Sapari Vara Patrika, the leading Telugu weekly. Inquilab continues its rule among Urdu publications, even as the daily has seen a drop.
