Using the guide :
The Guide presents a measure of reach of each mass media by district. This is in the form of Media Exposure Index (MEI). In Table 1, we extract MEI for rural areas of some districts in Andhra Pradesh.

Table 1 : Media Exposure Index - Rural Andhra Pradesh

Source : R K SWAMY/BBDO guide to market planning - 1999

The MEI is an indexed measure of media reach where the All India reach has been indexed to 100. As an example :

All India (rural) reach of Print = 24.1 %

(this means that 24.1% of all adults in rural India can be reached through the print medium).

MEI for Print in rural Guntur = 126.6 (from Table 1)

Therefore, reach of Print medium in rural Guntur = 24.1* 126.6/100 =30.5%

In Table 2 we present the reach figures for each medium in rural India.

Table 2 : Reach of mass media - All India (rural) (as % to total adult rural population).

Source : R K SWAMY/BBDO guide to market planning - 1999

Using the formula for calculating reach of media from the MEI and applying it on data from tables 1 and 2 we get table 3.

Table 3 : Reach of mass media - rural areas of districts of Andhra Pradesh (as % to total adult rural population).

Conclusion :
It can be seen that mass media has a very good reach in rural Andhra Pradesh. The reach of all mass media varies from 66.7 % to 72.9% which is very high especially when compared with most of North India. Thus mass media can be effectively used to spread awareness about AIDS. Individually both TV and Cinema media can be used, each having reach of between 37% and 44%.

 Who can access the guide ?

The guide is available as a 440 pages, four colour, hardbound book. It has a companion CD. It can be purchased from any office of R K SWAMY/BBDO Advertising Ltd