HYPERtext linking technology and communications

As with the Indian economy in general, Indian media is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth and change. The industry responded to independence and the subsequent influx of global businesses with broader reporting on business issues as well as extended coverage of socioeconomic topics. Like the country itself, India’s media is vibrant and varied, though it can be loosely grouped into six categories: national mainline and financial dailies, trade and technical publications, business journals, online media, vernacular press and broadcast.

What are Indian audiences reading?

Everyday in India, more than 600 million people pick up a newspaper to discover what’s happening in their country or around the world, and 230 million people turn on their radios. This gigantic need for information is met by an assortment of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV programs.

• National mainline and financial dailies. Today’s business publications and financial dailies echo the success of corporate India. Leading publications, such as The Times of India, The Economic Times and the Hindustan Times balance corporate stories with the requisite smattering of politics and scandal, which tend to be far more exciting for the average Indian journalist required to cover anything and everything.
  
• Trade and technical publications. India has a relatively large trade and technical segment, and publications are hungry for material to fill their pages. Leading journals such as Dataquest typically feature extensive analysis, especially of government policy, as many aspects of the technology industry in India are still regulated to a large degree. The layouts are fairly exciting, though the copy tends to be a bit verbose, and these magazines affect and influence a large number of middle-level managers, the main implementers of IT. 
  
• Business journals. These magazines are the most powerful voices among the media. These weekly and fortnightly publications are slick, urban in outlook, and have quite a fervent following. Many Indians read at least two or more of these magazines every month. Some examples are India Today, Outlook, Business Today and Businessworld.
  
• Online media. The growth of Internet use in India is having a tremendous effect on the way people access information and has had a catalyzing effect in the Indian media. Online media is exploding, with Indian names such as ITspace, ITNation and CIOL, clamoring against international brands such as CNET and ZDNet.
  
• Vernacular press. The vernacular press in India is largely irreverent and boisterous and has a long and rather checkered history. From the hand-printed papers that freedom fighters used to communicate with their compatriots to the more scurrilous rags (albeit of a different kind, today) the vernacular press reaches a phenomenally large number of people. However, since the language of technology in India is English, few of them focus on technology or the business of technology.
  
• Broadcast. Broadcast media plays a significant role in independent India with more than 60 channels airing in Indian skies and new channels launching regularly to meet audience need for news, politics and current affairs. The government’s open policy towards the industry has resulted in an influx of channels such BBC, CNN, STAR, CNBC and MTV, who see India as a strategic market. International channels are mixed with homegrown channels like Zee, Sahara One, Sony and the government-owned channel Doordarshan.

Increased readership

The National Readership Survey (NRS) 2005, which covered 522 publications (221 dailies and 301 magazines), revealed a significant increase in the reach of the press, measuring an additional 21 million readers in 2005 over 2002. It has also found that the number of readers of newspapers and magazines in rural India is now almost equal to those in urban India.

One of the reasons for the increase in the growth of readership is increasing literacy as measured by the ability to read and understand any language. The study estimates that in these terms, literacy has risen from 62.5 percent to 70.6 percent in the last three years, with the rise being higher in rural areas—from 55.6 percent to 64.6 percent—than in urban India where it has grown from 79.3 percent to 84.5 percent.

The Indian media landscape is proactive and energized and diligently covers the many facets of political, civic, technology and business journalism, while Indian audiences, both urban and rural, are demanding global and local news customized to their varied interests.