MUMBAI: FM radio in India appears to be clocking the healthiest growth among all media, if the just released Media Research User's Council's (MRUC's) Indian Readership Survey (IRS) Round 2 (R2) for 2008 figures are an indication.

FM radio has grown in reach by 56.3 per cent, while cable and satellite TV grew by 36.7 per cent and the internet grew by 55.9 per cent. Print grew by just 8.3 per cent. While FM radio shows a huge growth, the 'any radio' category grew by 12.1 per cent in the three year period between 2005 and 2008.

The time spent on media has gone up from 115.8 to 121.1 minutes. The study reveals that people are spending less time reading – both print (down from 27.4 minutes in 2007 to 26.5 minutes in 2008) and internet (down from 62.3 minutes to 60.1 minutes). They, however, are listening more to radio (up from 70.4 to 81.1 minutes). This is a substantial increase as compared to watching more TV (up from 96.4 minutes to 99.4 minutes).

The survey reveals that newspapers are being consumed between breakfast and lunch, while radio, internet and magazines are being consumed between post lunch break and till late evening.

Increased fragmentation and availability of same content across media may well be the reasons for a decreasing level of regularlity across media, notes the report - radio channels have also shown a 14.9 per cent drop from 2005 to 2008.

While the number of titles read is declining, the number of channels consumed in TV and radio is showing an increasing trend - the average number of FM channels is on a consistent growth curve for the last three years - recording an impressive 30.8 per cent change.