On the economics of media diversity

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A spate of controversies in recent months regarding the adequacy of India's 
media policy points to the problems involved in putting in place, in 
piecemeal manner, a media policy to regulate a multi-component industry 
that has experienced rapid growth without being subject to an adequately 
worked-out and broad policy framework. 

At the centre of the media industry is the print media, facing much 
competition for both audience and advertising revenue from the rapidly 
growing television broadcast business. However, despite predictions that 
the coming of television and the new media would dampen, if not halt, the 
growth of the print media, recent years have been characterised by its 
relatively rapid and unhindered expansion. 

Circulation figures, though known to be unreliable because of inflated 
claims by some newspapers, do provide some indication of the orders of 
magnitude involved. According to the Ministry of Information and 
Broadcasting, the total number of dailies in the country in 2000 stood at 
5,364, having expanded at the compound annual rate of 7.4 per cent per 
annum between 1988 and 2000. However, not all these dailies report their 
circulation, so that total circulation figures for dailies refer to a much 
smaller number. 

Thus in 2000, the number of dailies "related to circulation" (or reporting 
circulation) stood at just 1,493 (which was lower than the number 
registered in the base year 1988) and their reported circulation stood at 
59.1 million. 

It is in this background that we need to assess the threat from TV to the 
print medium. The growth of TV households and of those among them with 
cable and satellite (C&S) connections has indeed been rapid. The National 
Readership Survey of 2001 estimated that 42.3 per cent of Indian households 
were TV households and that, of these, 47.8 per cent were C&S households. 
As noted earlier, despite this, the gross and average circulation figures 
of reporting dailies seems to suggest that newspaper circulation is on the 
rise. 

Source:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/bline/2003/08/26/stories/2003082600260900.htm