Media - Print

The outward and visible pace of change seems suddenly frenetic. One minute the Guardian changes shape, the next the Sunday and Daily Telegraph begin testing new tabloid sections inside a broadsheet wrapper, the Independent on Sunday prepares to go the whole hog - and the Sunday Times carries on compacting its innards so that, as one very senior paper boy observes, you can't get it through any...

Within one week, a 184-year-old re-invents itself, a nova product for an up to now non-existing market will hit the streets, and an online product's official print version is launched. Is it coincidence that all these happened within one week, or is it just emphasising the vibrant potential of the print media market? Previously, analysts were reluctant to sound anywhere near positive about print...

Everyone loves to see changes at the top. And when these are based on statistics that reveal enough to arouse interest, it makes for a good read. The National Readership Survey (NRS) 2005 results, the second tranche of which has just been released, makes for such a good read. Consider the newspaper segment. In NRS 2003, the most widely read daily Dainik Bhaskar was ahead of its next placed rival...

NEW DELHI, August 1: Magazines in India are just too cheap for comfort when it comes to comparing prices internationally. This is one of the malaises plaguing the magazine industry in India, according to Aroon Purie, chief executive officer (CEO) and editor-in-chief, India Today Group. The ridiculous pricing strategies of magazines was actually harming the industry, Purie held. It is high time...

NEW DELHI, August 1: It was a session that was going the archetypal corporate way. Attractive powerpoint presentations. An overabundance of graphs and charts. Natters about metrics and market segmentation, and what have you. Till, of course, the floor was thrown open. That was when two eminent journalists took centrestage and made the panelists react to something they were visibly uncomfortable...

NEW DELHI, August 1: With the single largest selling magazine in the country being in a "vernacular" language, the contention that regional language publications are a step-child does not cut ice anymore. But perils are there, and this threat is posed not by linguistic biases, but by the burgeoning newspaper industry. The point was raised during the session "The changing business model as seen by...

NEW DELHI, August 1: A bare handful of magazines around the world can survive on cover price sales alone; it's the advertisements that make a magazine a viable proposition. Given this backdrop, the perspective of media users had to be taken seriously. The unanimous view that surfaced was that magazines present the most fragmented media option. Chinamani Rao, president, Universal McCann, dwelt at...

Little newspapers, otherwise known as tabloids or "compact format" editions, are all the rage in Europe. Will they someday come to dominate U.S. newspapers? Or, while we were looking the other way, have alien formats already made gains in the U.S. market? Are we facing, in other words, the Invasion of the Broadsheet Snatchers? It’s no secret that U.S. as well as European newspaper readership and...