India's Top 10 magazines

The last four rounds of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS)(R1 & R2 in 2008 and 2009) in 2009 and 2008 saw a continuous decline in the readership of all the top 10 magazines. The trend continues with the Q1, 2010 as well.

The last five rounds of IRS including Q1, 2010 have seen the total readership of Saras Salil, the No.1 amongst magazines across languages, decline from 97.77 lakh in R1, 2008 to 64.13 lakh in Q1, 2010. Thus, the magazine has lost 33.64 lakh readers in this period -- a loss of around 34 per cent. The Hindi fortnightly has lost as many as 2.2 lakh readers in the current round (Q1, 2010) over R2, 2009.

The Tamil weekly, Kumudam continues to hold on to its No. 2 position, with a total readership of 61.24 lakh readers. The magazine has lost around 13.21 lakh readers between Q1, 2010 and R1, 2008. Its total readership has declined from 70.14 lakh to 61.24 lakh in this period – a loss of 18 per cent.

So the Top ten magazines according to Indian Readership survey are:

1.Saras Salil
2.Kumudam
3.Vanitha
4.India Today (English)
5.Kungumam
6.India Today (Hindi)
7.Grih Shobha
8.Meri Saheli
9.Pratyogita Darpan
10.Ananda Vikatan
But declining readership pattern among the people is a cause of concern for the magazines publishing houses.