Line (BL). At that time The Economic Times (ET) was
the big competitor and they started a price war. We realised in the
post-liberalisation era interest in business and economy news was on the rise.
This decision has paid off and BL is growing steadily. Meanwhile, The Times of
India (TOI) unleashed a price war in Bangalore - much like the one in Delhi -
in 1996. It was then we first entered the price game. TOI started anther price
war in Hyderabad in 2000 and we joined the war along with Deccan Chronicle and
Express.
However, in Andhra Pradesh (AP) our circulation has
grown appreciably by 65 per cent since September 2000. Now AP ranks after Tamil
Nadu (TN) in terms of circulation. Circulation of the The Hindu is close to
9,00,000 now. Overall, we are doing well.
People might accuse the group of being conservative,
orthodox and so on, but you will always find a plurality of views expressed in
our publications by our many columnists.
Q. What has been the key to your success?
A. Even today we have not deviated from the core
values of journalism - truth, credibility and authenticity. At the same time,
we have to change with the times in terms of diversity of coverage and in the
coverage of regional news. People might accuse the group of being conservative,
orthodox and so on, but you will always find a plurality of views expressed in
our publications by our many columnists.
Q. The group seems to have very strong views on the
price wars among various newspapers.
A. There has to be a fine balance between commercial
interest and editorial independence. You may accuse us of not being very
aggressive but we have not sacrificed editorial values at the altar of crass
commercial interests as some media groups have done. In some newspapers, the
marketing department calls the shots and they have trivialised content. We, on
the other hand, do not believe in sensationalism even while dealing with
lighter issues. We have tried to address the needs of the youth and for trivia
through our supplements. Even when the going was good we did not fluctuate on
the page level according to the ad volume; nor did we introduce more ads in the
main pages at the cost of content.
The low price charged by Indian newspapers -
basically dictated by the policies of the largest group in the country - is not
good for the long-term health of this industry. I would say Indian newspapers
are among the lowest priced in the world. This creates a distortion in
newspaper economics and they have to, willy-nilly, depend too heavily on
advertising. Over-reliance on advertising is not healthy. From the editorial
standpoint it hurts as your readers are your constituency, and advertising is
only a means to reach them at affordable rates. However, you cannot be
ridiculously cheap and depend on ads for as much as 80 per cent of your
revenues.
The growth in readership created by price wars is a
disruptive growth and leads to some artificiality in the numbers. In Delhi when
Times OI and Hindustan Times (HT) went into a price war, the newspaper hawker
was able to make money by not selling the copies at all. Price cuts reached a
point where the papers sold at Re 1, while the number of pages was very high.
The hawker got 40 per cent commission and so the net price he paid to
newspapers was pitiful. They actually gained by not selling the paper to the
readers. This led to an artificial economics or "raddi economics"
which is not good for the industry.
This year has been bad for all newspapers because of the economic downturn, which translates into ad downturn for all. It highlights the importance of charging the reader a reasonable price and not a ridiculous rate. The group stands for truth and credibility. That is an awesome reputation for any media brand; what more can one hope for in this industry?