The Hindu Business Line : NRS results

The results of the National Readership Survey were released on June 8. India's largest readership survey, where 2.61 lakh households were interviewed, attracted a lot of attention.

One noticed a sense of irony that the Chairman of the Readership Survey Council, Pradeep Guha, is, officially at least, a television person.

The Y. B. Chavan Auditorium had an air of expectancy about it. Keep in mind that the twelfth standard results were declared on June 7 in Mumbai, and the NRS results came out the next day.

The comparison is made because every media person there was keen to see how well his organisation has done, or how well the competition had done. The fortunes of several media houses are determined by these findings.

Abundant caution

Last year's legal tamasha, where everyone blamed someone for going to court and trying to block the release of the NRS data, made the Council members cross their fingers and hope some other "interested" party might not use the legal route this time.

In any case, the council seemed to be very cautious, and had appointed a technical adviser who would oversee the entire operation and hopefully take remedial steps immediately. As a further check, Ernst & Young had been retained by the NRSC to conduct a series of quality checks to ensure the proper conduct of the survey. All this was in addition to appointing only one market research agency (ACNielsen) to conduct the enormous survey. I guess the NRSC learnt from the past when the presence of multiple MR agencies enabled a series of finger-pointing that did not help anyone.

Of course, Partha Rakshit, the head honcho of Nielsen, was smiling like the cat that had got the cream. With good reason too.

Happiness

Dainik Jagran had reason to very happy. It was seen as the No.1 daily in India.

Rural India had reason to be happy. Literacy seems to be increasing very satisfactorily.

The cable and satellite industry had reason to be very happy. There appears to be a veritable explosion in the number of C&S homes.

Manufacturers of colour TVs must be delighted. India seems to be increasingly hooked onto television viewing through colour TV sets.

Publishers of supplements should be happy that the readership of these supplements could be eating into the readership of magazines. You, of course, would not be surprised, since you are presently reading a supplement which such avidity.

No Malayalam

The NRSC has decided to leave no stone unturned and in this process all Malayalam publication figures were withheld until further validation is carried out over the next four weeks. The official reason given is that the figures are not consistent with the overall trend. To be read as: a dip in all Malayalam readership. "Simbly" shocking!

Channel V can now increase the frequency of their show which stars Lola Kutty (Jus' kidding).

Leo Burnett party

Arvind Sharma of Leo Burnett definitely likes the Cannes Awards. Not only does he go there, party, host parties and generally make himself popular, he begins the festivities right here in Mumbai.

Several fortunate people received a piping hot large-sized pizza with a sticker on it that read "We would like you to be well-fed before we let you loose amongst the Lions."

This was followed by the formal invitation to the Leo Burnett Cannes Predictions 2005 at the Hilton Towers. For the thirsty amongst his invitees, there was a special line that read "Screening begins at 8. To be preceded and followed by cocktails."

Well, Mr Sharma, is a very large hearted man, what with the large pizza and generous offer of cocktails. Mr Sharma is also a very intelligent man. He has managed to make this an annual event that is rather well-attended by advertisers, agency-types and the media. The most appropriate "theme" party you could think of in the industry.

AdClub Bombay

The President of the AdClub Bombay will soon be Kalpana Rao. The Vice-President will be Bhaskar Das. Not surprised? Obviously. You read it here first.

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