Monday, October 31, 2005
More Foreign Tie-ups with Indian Media
One wonders what, exactly, The Hindu is waiting for. News of further collaborations with foreign media in the Indian media market.
CNN and Maxim follow assault on Indian market (from Asians in Media.Org)
28th October, 2005
Global news channel CNN and the British magazine Maxim are the latest media organisations to announce their foray into the Indian market this week.
Relaxation of the country's rules in buying shares in local companies has led to a growing number of British multi-nationals, particularly in the newspaper and television industries, to explore joint ventures there.
CNN is teaming up with one of India's leading TV journalists to launch a new 24-hour news channel, it was announced this week. The channel, to be called CNN-IBN, will be in English and headed by the former talk-show host Rajdeep Sardesai.
He said CNN-IBN would be a "journalist-driven channel rooted in the realities of modern India" with "nationwide news-gathering capabilities, superior journalistic talent and a passion for news".
Steve Marcopoto, president and managing director of Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, said there was a "voracious" appetite for news in India. "Being the world's largest democracy, India has a voracious appetite for news and this unique partnership with GBN will enable Turner and CNN to bring an unparalleled global scope to this genre.
"The station will broadcast local news from 20 bureaux across the country as well as global news provided by CNN. CNN was joined this week by Dennis Publishing in looking at India for exapsion. It is aiming to launch its men's magazine Maxim in the country, stealing a march on bigger rivals such as FHM and Men's Health.
The launch is planned for November with a Bollywood celeb rumoured to front the first issue.Rasina Uberoi of Media Transasia India, which is licensing the magazine, said: "This is a great coup for [us]. Indian men are screaming out for a magazine such as Maxim and we are thrilled that we will be the first publisher to be able to satisfy the enormous demand in the market.
"Richard Bean, Maxim's international licensing director said: "Everyone is aware of the size of the market but the vitality and the hunger is difficult to comprehend unless one has spent time there."
It will launch with an initial print run of 80,000, even though the market for men's magazine is still seen as undeveloped. The bestselling men's magazine Man's World sells only between 12,000 and 15,000 copies.
Dennis has promised "spectacular parties" in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to mark the official launch.It will not be the only company planning parties however. AIM reported earlier this year that Independent News & Media, publishers of The Independent newspaper, invested £19 million in a Hindi-language newspaper venture.
Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, is also said to be eyeing up the Indian market. Reuters recently finished buying a 26% stake in an English language news channel being set up by the Times of India group.
CNN and Maxim follow assault on Indian market (from Asians in Media.Org)
28th October, 2005
Global news channel CNN and the British magazine Maxim are the latest media organisations to announce their foray into the Indian market this week.
Relaxation of the country's rules in buying shares in local companies has led to a growing number of British multi-nationals, particularly in the newspaper and television industries, to explore joint ventures there.
CNN is teaming up with one of India's leading TV journalists to launch a new 24-hour news channel, it was announced this week. The channel, to be called CNN-IBN, will be in English and headed by the former talk-show host Rajdeep Sardesai.
He said CNN-IBN would be a "journalist-driven channel rooted in the realities of modern India" with "nationwide news-gathering capabilities, superior journalistic talent and a passion for news".
Steve Marcopoto, president and managing director of Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, said there was a "voracious" appetite for news in India. "Being the world's largest democracy, India has a voracious appetite for news and this unique partnership with GBN will enable Turner and CNN to bring an unparalleled global scope to this genre.
"The station will broadcast local news from 20 bureaux across the country as well as global news provided by CNN. CNN was joined this week by Dennis Publishing in looking at India for exapsion. It is aiming to launch its men's magazine Maxim in the country, stealing a march on bigger rivals such as FHM and Men's Health.
The launch is planned for November with a Bollywood celeb rumoured to front the first issue.Rasina Uberoi of Media Transasia India, which is licensing the magazine, said: "This is a great coup for [us]. Indian men are screaming out for a magazine such as Maxim and we are thrilled that we will be the first publisher to be able to satisfy the enormous demand in the market.
"Richard Bean, Maxim's international licensing director said: "Everyone is aware of the size of the market but the vitality and the hunger is difficult to comprehend unless one has spent time there."
It will launch with an initial print run of 80,000, even though the market for men's magazine is still seen as undeveloped. The bestselling men's magazine Man's World sells only between 12,000 and 15,000 copies.
Dennis has promised "spectacular parties" in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to mark the official launch.It will not be the only company planning parties however. AIM reported earlier this year that Independent News & Media, publishers of The Independent newspaper, invested £19 million in a Hindi-language newspaper venture.
Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, is also said to be eyeing up the Indian market. Reuters recently finished buying a 26% stake in an English language news channel being set up by the Times of India group.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Interview: Robin Jeffery
From Outlook.com: Robin Jeffrey was the first to study the post-capitalist expansion of the newspaper industry in India. His book India's Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-Language Press, 1977-97 has been translated into Malayalam as Indiayute Patraviplavam. Currently professor at the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia, Jeffrey argues that in an India where 65 out of 100 Indians today can read, the proliferation of newspapers has led to an expansion and deepening of democracy and believes that the time is right for the Indian version of Citizen Kane.
You have talked in celebratory terms about the 'newspaper revolution' in India in the 1990s. Today, the Indian print sector is seeing another surge. What do you make of it?
If you think of newspapers as the cutting edge of capitalism, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that newspapers expand as marketers push more goods into wider markets. We're nearly 15 years into 'liberalisation'. We've also had notable growth in literacy in places like Rajasthan, which once would have been thought of as poor, illiterate and a poor place to start a small-town edition. That's not so today. It's understandable that newspaper expansion continues.
For an innately conservative society, can the term 'revolution' be really used? Has the media really helped usher in new ideas? Hasn't there been a competitive dumbing down?
No question that many of the big-city English dailies have headed towards British tabloid style.
But what happened in the 1980s, in my view, was the creation of a 'public sphere' in parts of the country where there's been nothing like it before. I was fascinated by the Telugu policeman I met in 1993 who told me that the spread of Telugu dailies had made the work of the police difficult. Now, he said, villagers knew that the police weren't supposed to beat them up—and they would "go to the newspapers" if the police did. When you repeat that perception tens of thousands of times around India, then you are, I think, talking about a revolution.
Managements are driven by a desire to maximise profits though they talk of the press being the fourth estate. Besides, we've seen the entrenchment of monopolies despite democracy. How then can the media be a harbinger of change?
Owners have always aimed to make money and wield influence. But they often do other things in spite of themselves. A newspaper owner in Bangalore has no problem if the reporters and editors run a campaign against oppressive landlords in northern Karnataka—providing that campaign captures readers and doesn't put off advertisers.
Hasn't information explosion, the 24-hour news channels, made news redundant? Sehwag's century or Karisma Kapoor's marital problems figure as 'breaking news' on TV. Can one not shut oneself from the world of news for a month and yet feel no less wise?
It depends what your interests are. If a telephone pole is falling in my village, and a reporter and photographer come and say they're doing a story about it, I am going to buy the paper the next day. The local superintending engineer may find he needs to read the paper too. It's hard to imagine a time when local news, in print, on TV or radio, is not going to have an audience.
TV and print media are joining hands—the launch of DNA by Zee TV and 'Dainik Bhaskar'. What do we make of this?
It's a proprietor's dream: One newsroom! In India there's still a lot of competitive families and organisations, but in other places, where media is controlled by two or three big companies, the linking of TV and print is a grotesque prospect. Towns could have one newspaper, which owns one of the town's TV stations.It reduces the chances of different stories getting out into widespread circulation.
Does language press and the English media continue to address a 'split public'? While the English language media took an anti-Hindutva stand during the Gujarat riots, the local Gujarati media sought to reflect the Hindu opinion.
There are more than two 'publics' in India. But various 'publics' overlap and interact constantly. Increasingly, I suspect, the English language press will take stories and leads from Indian language newspapers. We'll see more of the agenda set by Indian language media outlets, rather than the other way round. That's part of the process of local news becoming increasingly important for capturing readers.
In Tamil Nadu, for the Sun TV network, political and business interests seem to go hand in hand. The group enjoys virtual monopoly in television and is now taking on print with the purchase of 'Dinakaran'. In Telugu, 'Eenadu' and ETV control most of the market. Why do monopolies persist and don't we see healthy competition?
What business person would turn down the chance of operating a monopoly? The trend in English-speaking countries has been towards monopoly in the media. In Australia, two big newspaper chains control 90 per cent of daily circulation in big cities. For the time being, India is relatively fortunate with the kind of newspaper competition you see on the hawkers' stalls in the bus stands in, say, Thiruvananthapuram or Delhi on any morning.
Whenever the topic is FDI in print, there's talk of safeguards and issues of national concern. But wouldn't the presence of foreign players and global capital challenge the complacency of monopolistic mercantile capitalism?
That is probably right. If foreigners start papers, there's an extra voice created. Australia faces this question at the moment. Government has to decide whether to eliminate restrictions on cross-media ownership. And if it does, it will also probably lift restrictions of foreign ownership to try to get some more players into the media business. In India, too, foreign arrivals might provoke vigorous Indian response. Ramoji Rao said one of the reasons for founding Eenadu was to give Telugu speakers in the 1970s a Telugu-owned voice. It was a matter of self-respect for someone who could afford to express his self-respect by starting a newspaper.
You have discussed the connection between democracy and media expansion. But the media does not seem to be representative of demographic realities. In 1999, you had devoted a chapter to the near-total absence of Dalits in Indian newsrooms. Has anything changed?
Almost nothing, so far as I am aware. I'm told, reliably I think, that there is not a single Dalit newsreader or weather person on any television channel. When will we get, say, a national Dalit weekly, doing what the Chicago Defender did for African-Americans from the 1920s to the 1950s? The absence of such a voice is a mark of the political and economic weakness of the Dalit middle class.
In the US and Europe, there are demands on the media to be socially responsible. Why does the Editors Guild in India not seem to have similar concerns? Moreover the Press Council of India seems virtually defunct. Is this not dangerous?
If the national government intends to let the Press Council quietly fade away, that would be a very bad thing. What's needed is a revamped "media council" that would monitor ethics and conduct in the electronic as well as print media. But such a council would be politically difficult to create. Most governments find media matters very hard to deal with because they fear that powerful proprietors will turn their organisations against the government.
You have talked in celebratory terms about the 'newspaper revolution' in India in the 1990s. Today, the Indian print sector is seeing another surge. What do you make of it?
If you think of newspapers as the cutting edge of capitalism, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that newspapers expand as marketers push more goods into wider markets. We're nearly 15 years into 'liberalisation'. We've also had notable growth in literacy in places like Rajasthan, which once would have been thought of as poor, illiterate and a poor place to start a small-town edition. That's not so today. It's understandable that newspaper expansion continues.
For an innately conservative society, can the term 'revolution' be really used? Has the media really helped usher in new ideas? Hasn't there been a competitive dumbing down?
No question that many of the big-city English dailies have headed towards British tabloid style.
But what happened in the 1980s, in my view, was the creation of a 'public sphere' in parts of the country where there's been nothing like it before. I was fascinated by the Telugu policeman I met in 1993 who told me that the spread of Telugu dailies had made the work of the police difficult. Now, he said, villagers knew that the police weren't supposed to beat them up—and they would "go to the newspapers" if the police did. When you repeat that perception tens of thousands of times around India, then you are, I think, talking about a revolution.
Managements are driven by a desire to maximise profits though they talk of the press being the fourth estate. Besides, we've seen the entrenchment of monopolies despite democracy. How then can the media be a harbinger of change?
Owners have always aimed to make money and wield influence. But they often do other things in spite of themselves. A newspaper owner in Bangalore has no problem if the reporters and editors run a campaign against oppressive landlords in northern Karnataka—providing that campaign captures readers and doesn't put off advertisers.
Hasn't information explosion, the 24-hour news channels, made news redundant? Sehwag's century or Karisma Kapoor's marital problems figure as 'breaking news' on TV. Can one not shut oneself from the world of news for a month and yet feel no less wise?
It depends what your interests are. If a telephone pole is falling in my village, and a reporter and photographer come and say they're doing a story about it, I am going to buy the paper the next day. The local superintending engineer may find he needs to read the paper too. It's hard to imagine a time when local news, in print, on TV or radio, is not going to have an audience.
TV and print media are joining hands—the launch of DNA by Zee TV and 'Dainik Bhaskar'. What do we make of this?
It's a proprietor's dream: One newsroom! In India there's still a lot of competitive families and organisations, but in other places, where media is controlled by two or three big companies, the linking of TV and print is a grotesque prospect. Towns could have one newspaper, which owns one of the town's TV stations.It reduces the chances of different stories getting out into widespread circulation.
Does language press and the English media continue to address a 'split public'? While the English language media took an anti-Hindutva stand during the Gujarat riots, the local Gujarati media sought to reflect the Hindu opinion.
There are more than two 'publics' in India. But various 'publics' overlap and interact constantly. Increasingly, I suspect, the English language press will take stories and leads from Indian language newspapers. We'll see more of the agenda set by Indian language media outlets, rather than the other way round. That's part of the process of local news becoming increasingly important for capturing readers.
In Tamil Nadu, for the Sun TV network, political and business interests seem to go hand in hand. The group enjoys virtual monopoly in television and is now taking on print with the purchase of 'Dinakaran'. In Telugu, 'Eenadu' and ETV control most of the market. Why do monopolies persist and don't we see healthy competition?
What business person would turn down the chance of operating a monopoly? The trend in English-speaking countries has been towards monopoly in the media. In Australia, two big newspaper chains control 90 per cent of daily circulation in big cities. For the time being, India is relatively fortunate with the kind of newspaper competition you see on the hawkers' stalls in the bus stands in, say, Thiruvananthapuram or Delhi on any morning.
Whenever the topic is FDI in print, there's talk of safeguards and issues of national concern. But wouldn't the presence of foreign players and global capital challenge the complacency of monopolistic mercantile capitalism?
That is probably right. If foreigners start papers, there's an extra voice created. Australia faces this question at the moment. Government has to decide whether to eliminate restrictions on cross-media ownership. And if it does, it will also probably lift restrictions of foreign ownership to try to get some more players into the media business. In India, too, foreign arrivals might provoke vigorous Indian response. Ramoji Rao said one of the reasons for founding Eenadu was to give Telugu speakers in the 1970s a Telugu-owned voice. It was a matter of self-respect for someone who could afford to express his self-respect by starting a newspaper.
You have discussed the connection between democracy and media expansion. But the media does not seem to be representative of demographic realities. In 1999, you had devoted a chapter to the near-total absence of Dalits in Indian newsrooms. Has anything changed?
Almost nothing, so far as I am aware. I'm told, reliably I think, that there is not a single Dalit newsreader or weather person on any television channel. When will we get, say, a national Dalit weekly, doing what the Chicago Defender did for African-Americans from the 1920s to the 1950s? The absence of such a voice is a mark of the political and economic weakness of the Dalit middle class.
In the US and Europe, there are demands on the media to be socially responsible. Why does the Editors Guild in India not seem to have similar concerns? Moreover the Press Council of India seems virtually defunct. Is this not dangerous?
If the national government intends to let the Press Council quietly fade away, that would be a very bad thing. What's needed is a revamped "media council" that would monitor ethics and conduct in the electronic as well as print media. But such a council would be politically difficult to create. Most governments find media matters very hard to deal with because they fear that powerful proprietors will turn their organisations against the government.
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