At one time, certainly before 1990,
there may have been a tacit understanding or even an agreement
between newspaper publishers not to encroach on the each other’s
territories, markets or languages. But the trend that began 20 years
ago with what was considered predation then, has now flowered into a
great expansion.
The newspaper industry in India over
the last 21 years has grown well in almost all respects and matured
in many just as the economy has. With a large parallel growth in
literacy, it has weathered the privatisation and multiplicity of
television news channels, as it takes advantage of the internet and
gets ready for the convergent opportunities of a large base of
cell-phones and a tiny but growing base of tablets. The key
phenomenon has been expansion in circulation, new editions, more
pages, more pages in colour, new media such as radio and television
and new print media products as well.
In these years the first wave of FDI in
newspapers has led to the first wave of foreign direct investment
(FDI) and closely held family companies going to the stock market.
Some consolidation has also taken place such as Bennett Coleman’s
acquisition of the upstart Vijay Karnataka group and Jagran
Prakashan’s acquisition of Mid Day Multimedia’s print assets.
There have been fissures and cracks among owner families too, but
what is significant is that in most cases they continue to work
together while facing the market.
There is a new confidence amongst the
Indian newspaper publishers which has erased the old linguistic and
media boundaries. Every fast-growing newspaper group has crossed
linguistic or geographic boundaries in the past ten years. No
territory is sacrosanct as newspapers have to leverage their brands
to survive.
It is also nice to see that there is a
resurgence among some of the strong newspaper groups that had
suffered setbacks in the past decade. Amongst these one sees the
resurgence of the Rajasthan Patrika and Deccan Herald groups in
winning back circulation and starting new editions as a reflection of
the inherent strength of the Indian newspaper industry as a whole.
Naresh Khanna editor@ippgroup.in
