In early 2005, Mumbai became the battleground for what was perhaps India’s fiercest newspaper war in recent times. In the space of a few months, two new English dailies—DNA and the Hindustan Times (HT)—launched in what is India’s single biggest advertising market. Incumbent The Times of India (TOI), which had enjoyed a near-monopoly for decades, counter-attacked by adding another paper to the mix, the tabloid Mumbai Mirror.
The battles pitted some of India’s most powerful media houses against each other. While TOI and HT are the flagship newspapers of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL) and HT Media Ltd, respectively, DNA was a start-up from Diligent Media Corp., a 50:50 joint venture between the Essel Group, the company behind Zee group, one of the largest broadcast networks, and the Bhaskar Group, the publisher of India’s second most-read Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar.
Now, a similar war is about to break out in Bangalore as DNA prepares to launch its Bangalore edition later this year with the stated goal of selling 300,000 copies, or just under half of the 650,000 copies of English newspapers currently sold each day by all other papers combined, according to K.U. Rao, chief executive of Diligent.
A sleepy backwater as far as national print media goes until fairly recently, Bangalore, India’s tech capital, is set to become a new battleground because of the growing ranks of young, urban professionals, a demographic that advertisers love.
“As an ad market, Bangalore has surpassed Chennai and Kolkata during the last two years to become third, after Mumbai and Delhi,” notes Nandini Dias, chief operating officer at media agency Lodestar Universal. “Media follows where there is advertising.”
An analyst at a Mumbai-based media-buying agency, who asked not to be identified since he isn’t authorized to speak to the media, pegged the annual spending on print advertising from Bangalore at about Rs500 crore. Mumbai generates around Rs1,500 crore and New Delhi, Rs1,200 crore in advertising, according to his agency’s estimates.
In a country where the newspaper industry is among the most subsidized, in terms of how little readers pay for a copy of the newspaper, it is Bangalore’s advertising revenue opportunity—and not necessarily demand from readers for more newspapers—that is causing the stampede.
Indeed, even before DNA comes, Bangalore is already home to TOI, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Deccan Herald, Deccan Chronicle (DC), Bangalore Mirror (also part of BCCL) and Mid-Day English newspapers, with a few of them having launched in the past couple of years.
Souce : Live Mint
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