WAR OF THE TITANS

BY ASHRAF ENGINEER

I’ve been watching the newspaper war in Mumbai for some time now. The market obviously had the space for more players, and The Times of India must have known for a while that sooner rather than later the ways of virtual monopoly would end.
But what’s exciting is to watch is what the new players do with the media space they’ve occupied.
TOI has responded by upping quality, adding pages, many of them for city coverage, and marketing itself more aggressively. Hindustan Times chose the silent, strong approach by not making a huge hoopla about is launch, letting its Salman Khan ‘scoop’ do the talking. It’s superior design kicked in to attract the eyeballs and it generally seems to have made a favourable impression as a credible rival to the Old Lady of Boribunder.
But it was DNA which I had been waiting for. A virtual star cast of an editorial team had been put together and crores had been spent on an advertising campaign that soon turned controversial. But I did feel slightly disappointed with the initial editions. Given the marketing, financial and editorial muscle of the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee groups, the product was as good or bad as the rest in the market. You didn’t need some of the biggest guns in the industry to come out with a paper that merely match up. I expected more.
Maybe they initially confused more pages with a bigger bang for the subscriber’s buck. I don’t know whether that’s a completely correct assumption. Yes, many do feel that they’re getting value for what they’ve paid. But as a reader of this particular paper you expected greater editorial quality and innovations in content. DNA disappointed not because it was bad, but because it was only as good as everyone else.
Having said all this, I must confess DNA is improving by the day and where it will eventually settle on the subscription charts will be interesting to watch.
The churn in the Mumbai print industry, I believe, is very good. The cut-throat competition will not only keep standards high for the consumer, but will also allow journalists options which never existed before. Salaries are just one measure of the rising stock of the journalist. Media companies will now have to go that extra mile to take care of them to ensure that much-needed talent is not eroded.
I was asked whether I thought all these players will survive in the long run. My own take is yes, though I think we will see, eventually, a dip in the circulation numbers. Right now there is great curiosity about the new products and many households have signed up for all the three big ones. In the long run, consumers will choose merely one or two of the four or five players in the market. That will lead to a plateauing of the numbers and a stabilisation of the market.
I wonder whether the smaller players like Indian Express and Mid Day will land up getting burned in the crossfire.

Bee Gee's note: Best known for reading books on the office staircase, my colleague Ashraf Engineer is optimistic about DNA. Even I think similarly, since the paper has changed quite a bit since the day it was launched. Sitting in Pune, one can see that the changes are for the better.