Newspapers circulation worldwide rose last year with India and China leading the growth, even as internet firms and TV channels registered record eyeballs, says the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

India and China played a major role in the rising circulations as excluding the global paid-for circulation excluding Asia (including India and China), rose a miniscule 0.04 per cent.

Across the various sub-continents, Asia recorded a 2.99 per cent growth, South East Asia''s growth was 4.59 per cent. However, North America recorded a decline of 1.97 per cent in the paid-for circulations in 2006.

Asia also recorded the biggest rise of 6.13 per cent in the number of paid-for titles, as against a total of 3.22 per cent globally and declines in north and South Americas.
The number of new paid-for titles crossed 11,000 for the first time, WAN said, quoting preliminary data from its World Press Trends Survey.

The report said that circulations continued to grow globally belying various myths about newspapers, such as falling circulations and the influence of newspaper as a medium and a business being on the decline.

The circulation of free daily newspaper more than doubled over the five years to 40.8 million copies a day, while more than 1.4 billion people are now reading a newspaper daily, the survey found.