Kerala Regional Committee INS: "Readership drop in Kerala does not reflect market realities"

Following the release of IRS Q2 2012, Indian Newspaper Society's (INS) Kerala Regional Committee has pointed out that the results do not reflect the market reality in Kerala. 

In a statement issued by the association, P V Chandran, chairman, Kerala Regional Committee, INS, said, "During the months of March and April 2012, the distribution of the publications in Kerala was affected due to agents' strike. We had requested the industry bodies like ABC and MRUC to take this into consideration and to exclude the strike-affected period from their reports. ABC agreed to our request and released the January - June 2012 period report without the strike affected days, but MRUC did not agree to suspend the samples of this period. This has resulted in an overall drop of dailies and magazines in Kerala."

Further noting that IRS is a sample survey, he added, "The samples selected during the strike affected period, when publications were not available, have affected the readership figures. Therefore, we believe that the readership figures of Kerala are incomplete and do not reflect the actual market reality. The industry bodies like MRUC should be sensitive to such problems faced by the publications, especially since normalcy was restored in a short period whereas the impact of this survey will be there for a longer period."