This COVID-19 pandemic has hit many sectors in the state and the print media was one of the brutally effected fields among the many. The online websites are going good due to the lockdown but the number of copies of our popular Telugu daily newspapers being sold per day has been declined marginally.
For reference, we have Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) which is bring referred as the standard medium for the measurement of the circulation of news daily. Though there is a criticism on this ABC, its standard principles are being followed and verified by the News Dailies regularly.
According to it, the so-called largest circulated Telugu daily, Eenadu has lost 18,945 copies due to the COVID-19 effect in Telangana. This has happened just in two months period and the Sakshi daily has lost 5,418 copies where Andhra Jyothi surprisingly has shown a substantial increase of 332 copies.
Till December, in Telangana 7.22 lakh copies of Eenadu were in circulation on average and Sakshi has 4.35 lakhs where Andhra Jyothi stand in the third position with 2.69 lakh copies in circulation.
In Andhra Pradesh both Eenadu and Jyothi suffered huge losses where Sakshi paper has increased 15,467 copies in its regular circulation. In the last 6 months, in Andhra, Eenadu has lost 41,307 copies where Andhra Jyothi is the most affected with 58,875 copies loss.