IRS to resume very soon: Rakesh Sharma, INS
While the COVID-19 pandemic presented formidable challenges to the print media industry in India, it also catalysed innovation, adaptation, and resilience, paving the way for a transformed media landscape with renewed emphasis on trusted journalism, and diversified revenue strategies. In a chat with exchange4media, Rakesh Sharma, President of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) discussed some crucial challenges faced by the print industry and how it navigated them. Here are the excerpts: Q1. Why has the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) not been conducted since 2019? Will it begin anytime soon? Well, the IRS was deferred during the Corona period. The people were not welcoming the surveyors into their households for fear of carrying that Coronavirus and it's almost now three-and-a-half to four years when the Corona is over. But, there are multiple meetings which are happening in the board of the IRS to restart it. I am told, very shortly we are going to restart. Q2. It's been almost six months since you became the President of the IRS. What kind of problems have you seen that the Indian newspaper industry is facing? The biggest problem the industry is facing is the pressure of advertising. The volumes are drying up, which is a challenge. So far, the readers have been subsidised by the advertisers. The newspapers were able to sell the copies much below the cost price. Only because the newspapers were surviving with the revenues from advertising, which were huge in numbers and they were able to pass on the subsidy to the readers. When advertising is moving away from printed pages, the industry has got to think about the second stream of revenues. Q3. What are your proposed solutions to sail through these challenges? If you take America, the cost of a newspaper is almost about two dollars. In Britain, it is one and a half pounds. You take the entire Southeast Asia, and nowhere the newspaper is available for less than twenty rupees. It's only in India that newspaper prices vary from two rupees to five rupees to six rupees. Very few newspapers sell for more. The cost of producing a newspaper today is forty paise per page. If I am given a newspaper of forty pages, that means the cost of production is about sixteen rupees. Mind you that is the cost alone of the newspaper and I am selling it for six rupees. Out of that six rupees, thirty percent goes as a commission so that means the net I am making is four rupees twenty paisa only. And this four rupees twenty paisa is also not netting because of the logistic cost, selling cost, other expenses and more.To top it all, the newspapers are launching schemes for the reader where the net realisation of the total cover price is only ten percent. If a newspaper is priced at rupees five, with all the schemes, the subscription schemes, the gifts which are offered to the reader, the net is about fifty paisa. Therefore when the cost of production is Rs 10-16 and the papers are left with almost nothing at the end. How will a publication survive for a longer period? How will the advertiser subsidise a reader? For this very reason, whatever meetings I am chairing, I say that subscription price and the cover price have to be very seriously looked into if newspapers have to survive in the industry. Q4. But don’t you think increasing the prices of the newspaper will lead to a further drop in the reader base, considering print anyhow hasn’t reached its pre-Covid levels? Let me give you an example. There is The Hindu which is the highest priced newspaper in India. Doesn't it have circulation? It has made itself so relevant for a particular segment that the segment doesn't stop reading their paper. If the industry survives, it will do with its readers. If the reader goes, so will the advertiser. And if both go, what will the newspaper industry be left with? Holistically, we have to think of a solution where we can retain the reader and increase the advertising volume. If newspapers make their content relevant and a necessity for the reader, then they will never go. Q5. The 5% custom duty on newsprint prices has been another major concern for the industry. What is your take on the same? I recently met the Secretary of Information and Broadcasting, during the ad-hoc budget launch, and requested him to remove this duty. Sanjay Jaju told me he would forward the request to the Ministry of Finance and let me know. Q6. What other demands have you kept in front of the MIB to be taken care of? I have also requested them to look into the Rate Structure Committee Report which hasn’t been updated since the past few years. The rate revision is severely needed by the industry. Another thing I suggested was that we are in the digital era and the government should not just give CBC rates on printed media’s circulation but digital newspaper circulation too. The eyeballs that a digital paper gets is lakhs in number, hence the ads that those eyeballs see shall be considered too. The MIB has said they will look into this as to how they can factor in electronic viewership. Another concern I have raised is, if rates of newspapers are increased but the total budget remains the same, then it would hardly show any impact on my revenue numbers and hence the budget for the print industry shall be increased too. The government also applies GST on digital news subscriptions but there is no GST on newspapers. Hence, that shall be withdrawn too. Q7. What is your view on the PRP bill that has been recently brought into existence? Does it have any downsides? We wholeheartedly welcome this bill. It was a 150-year-old bill which has been replenished with the new bill of 2024. The best part is that publishers do not have to go to multiple places to get their titles created. It will all be done online and within a specific period of 60 days. The industry is divided on whether it will compromise press freedom but every institution, every society is independent. I feel today, in the interest of the print industry, there is nothing wrong in the PRP act. Q8. For the future, what changes does the newspaper industry need to make? There is a need for one only change. To make your newspaper digital and relevant for the reader. Readers get most information digitally or via the TV before the newspaper. Today, the newspaper is not read for information. The reader wants to know how a certain news will impact his life, his country's life, his state's life. Until we satisfy their hunger for this information, we will not become relevant. The medium will change, but the media will not change. The information system will remain the same. We have to continuously improve the information system. We have to understand the needs, aspirations, necessities of our biggest constituent, which is the media.
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