by Tatiana Repkova

According to the sixth annual CDMS, The Times of India is the most read general interest daily in the print media space, with a 72 percent average issue readership in 2006.

The Times of India maintains its lead across all metros except Chennai, the only metro where TOI does not publish. TOI, incidentally, is the world's largest English language broadsheet by a large margin.

The CDMS is an annual survey conducted among senior executives across the country's 500 biggest listed private sector companies, top 100 PSUs and 100 leading financial sector companies including banks, merchant banks and FIIs. The ACNielsen report also notes that TOI's sister publication, The Economic Times, continued to be the "most read business daily." According to the survey, listenership of radio has almost doubled from 38 percent to 72 percent.

"The increase in radio listenership is in line with the amount of time this group spends in their cars," said Rajshree Dave, director of ACNeilsen India.

Interestingly, TV seems to be under some pressure. The average number of TV channels watched declined from six to four and "time spent on their most preferred news-based programmes decreased significantly." The Times of India; February 3, 2007; http://www.publicitas.com/display.asp?id=6.8&chp=6.6&foot=6.9&cpny=*&LIB2=PPNRequestNews(3)&initlib=no&PARAM1=18003&navig=no&statinfo=news