Political India: Engaging America

And a yet another potential strategy that The Hindu might do well to follow- This time from an in-house source... Essentially, another agressive marketing approach would be in terms of acquisitions, not of other newspaper companies, but of companies that may be potential advertisers. After all, advertising does account for more than 80% of total revenue for most major newspapers in India. Of course, this raises the spectre of marketing functions dominating editorial operations, but The Hindu has a legendary ability to keep the former in check, and so this is unlikely to be problematic...

Sevanti Ninan writes

In the fortnight since this column was last published, two more TV channels (NDTV Profit and Awaaz from CNBC) and at least one more newspaper edition (Nai Duniya in Gwalior) have made their appearance. Last year saw several examples of expansion and consolidation. This year will see many more. Before the year is out, The Hindu's bastion, Chennai, is likely to see the entry of at least two more English newspapers. One of them will also go to Tiruchirapalli and Coimbatore. Mumbai may actually see the long-promised arrival of The Hindustan Times, as well as of the Dainik Bhaskar. Punjab may see a new Punjabi player called Dainik Jagran. Only the Eastern region — barring Bihar and Jharkhand — seems immune to the compulsive flowering of yet more and more media. Several new TV channels are also on the anvil, including a scheduled launch in the first quarter of 2005 from the Jagran group.

In the pink of health

What does so much growth signify? An industry that is in the pink of health? Or one in which expansion is increasingly becoming both a technological necessity and a matter of surviving the competition? With the advent of Direct to Home (DTH) platforms, it is no long enough to have one or two channels to offer; you need half a dozen to make up bouquets. And when another newspaper comes into your territory you have to go out and give it competition in its own territory if you don't want to get hammered.

Growth fuelled primarily by advertising will remain the norm, but avenues of financing are changing in the media business. Each successive year sees more and more media houses going in for initial public offerings. Deccan Chronicle, NDTV, TV Today, TV Eighteen, Balaji Telefilms have all seen enthusiastic public responses to their IPOs. Expansion has meant the following: more and more media stocks on offer, the entry of foreign investment, both direct and institutional, into the Indian media, media houses diluting equity through private placement, pushing for new avenues of advertising, doing journalism on the cheap, and investing in new territories.

When family-owned companies go public, it opens up their functioning to the scrutiny of a market regulator. When foreign direct investment comes into a paper like the Dainik Jagran or a Hindustan Times, as happened recently, it also leads to due diligence by the prospective foreign partner, and so theoretically, more transparency and professionalism all around. In theory, doing charming things like charging money for publishing news, printing just for raddi or the resale value of the newsprint, adopting unfair trade practices such as price undercutting should become more difficult. But one must not underestimate business ingenuity.

Or sheer inventiveness. Eyes popped within the media last week when a newspaper reported that the Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd. (BCCL), publishers of the Times of India, have worked out an altogether amazing new approach to ensuring a flow of advertising despite growing competition from TV and other publications. It is buying equity in companies which are expected to be big advertisers and sewing up deals whereby they will advertise exclusively with BCCL. Times have changed. Earlier, newspapers were owned by companies that produced sugar and textiles. Today newspapers are setting out to own stake in fashion wear and retail chain stores.

And what will BCCL do for its new partners in return? It will promote their brands in its newspapers, web portal, radio and TV channels. What will it get by promoting them, in addition to locked-in advertising? The value of its investment in those companies goes up. When it wants to get out of the arrangement, it can exit by selling the stock it has bought. The company says it intends to do many more such deals. Think of the many promotional news items that will sprout on its pages and channels as a result. Pragmatism will replace any shred of idealism that might remain about media objectives, and media consumers will have to come to terms with this.

Will this route to assured advertising be emulated by others? The catch is that most media houses do not have the spare cash to take such a route. BCCI is incredibly rich in comparison with many other media companies. In the last financial year it made a few hundred crores in post-tax profit which it has the freedom to invest.

When media stocks become listed, that too changes public perception of media motivation. Published criticism of the media's overreaction to the stock market crash when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government was being formed, attributed the TV channel frenzy to the fact that stocks of recently-listed TV companies like NDTV had also been affected by the fall. But all the eyebrow-raising comes primarily from within the media. Consumers are going out and investing in media stocks, subscribing to the new media offerings and not worrying too much about motivation.

Overall, they are beneficiaries of all the dynamism in the media industry. It touches everybody. Competition is pushing more and more media companies into India's hinterland, beyond the metro cities. Every Indian will become a media consumer, a media source (as very local news becomes the norm), and an advertiser. Already, people in India's villages are placing advertisements in newspapers. Could anybody have foreseen this even five years ago?