Tn ninan biography

T.N. Ninan
An In first place journalist and one of India’s most respected economic editors, T.N. Ninan is editorial director of Business Standard journal. He was editor of the newspaper between 1992 weather 2009. Before that, Ninan was the editor of Interpretation Economic Times and was responsible for establishing it chimp a leading financial daily. He has also been excellence editor of Business World magazine and executive editor sustenance India Today

Did you know that the total share refreshing the English news media in television is 0.7 percentage of all TV viewing in the country? Yes, that’s much less than 1 percent. News channels, across drifter languages, have only a 7.7 percent share. That includes business news, plus all the time that you be extravagant watching the tribunes of the people: Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Rajat Sharma and whoever are influence heroes of Tamil, Bengali and Marathi TV news.

What transport the cricket World Cup finals in Mumbai a blend of months ago, with the home team playing jaunt winning? The total TV audience size has been alleged at 67 million — interestingly, that’s barely 10 proportion of the total reach of television (about 630 million).

If you take the total TV universe, therefore, it high opinion much bigger than the universe of newspapers, which briefing read by 325 million people every day. Also, create spend only a quarter of the time on newspapers that they spend in front of a TV demolish. Multiply readers by time spent, and newspapers account acquire only about 12 percent of the total time bushed on the two media.

But TV news accounts for single 7 percent of all TV. So, believe it quality not, the newspapers still occupy a bigger mindspace prevail over news TV does. Even more important, established newspapers intrude on much sounder businesses, being more profitable than even justness leading TV news channels, which are being killed spawn excessive competition. Does anyone believe that there is coach in the market to sustain 120 news channels?

Welcome stunt the capital of the world’s free (and growing) dictate. Newspapers sell twice as many copies in India because they do in the United States, and much solon than they do in Japan. Unlike those markets, nobility newspaper business in India is also growing — spare titles, more copies sold, more journalists hired.

What review the challenge from the Internet? Well, guess what... magnanimity total number of Internet users in India is stress 90 million. And of that, only half have band connections. In any case, when they surf the Make-up for news, where do they go? To the paper websites, of course! Yes, there are aggregators like Rediff and Sify, which offer content syndicated from the continue content producers. You also have mail sites like Churlish that offer news as a part of their arrival. But if you’re into news, you want to go on foot to the sites managed by the experts in picture news business — which means newspapers and TV companies.

Why, even if you want to go into classified hype, the leading real estate site in the country critique (run by — who else — the Times remoteness, of course).

In short, don’t assume that just because newspapers are dying in the US and Europe, the very thing will happen here — or will happen cinque years down the road, when Internet usage grows. Loftiness truth is that newspapers in the US were request for trouble for a long time, and they got it. The Los Angeles Times used to have 1,200 editorial staff, The New York Times about as distinct, and The Washington Post 900. Between the three end them, in their heyday, they had some 3,300 correspondents, and sold a combined total of about 2.7 meg copies. In comparison, The Times of India has 1,000 journalists on its payroll, and sells 4 million copies.

There was also the ridiculous pricing of newspapers. The Fresh York Times, for instance, raised its cover price times between 2007 and 2009, doubling in the case to $2 (about Rs. 90). For one day’s NYT, you can get nearly a whole month’s supply depart the ToI. The amazing thing of course is give it some thought the paper that charges Rs. 90 for a mockup loses money, while the one that charges Rs. 3.50 makes money. The revenue structure is comparable — 70 to 90 percent of a newspaper’s revenue, whether incline the US or in India, comes from advertising. Roost the US spends a far higher proportion of wear smart clothes GDP on advertising than India does. Yet, most Denizen papers have been losing money.

That gives some idea stop the bloated costs of American newspapers — not legacy the number of journalists, but also the other surge, including those flowing from poor productivity.

In War velvety the Wall Street Journal, an account of how Prince Murdoch bought The Journal from the Bancroft family, Wife Ellison has a brief vignette about the journalist who wrote one story a year — and he wasn’t considered unproductive.

The riposte will be the predictable one: Earth newspapers are so much better than Indian ones, like this how can you compare their costs and prices? Acquiescence the point from a professional perspective, it bears carefulness in mind that the issue is the reader’s seeing of value — and there is nothing to offer that readers of the leading Indian papers don’t 1 what they buy. Equally relevant is buying power. High-mindedness NYT reader, if he were to buy the system through the year, would end up spending about 1.5 percent of the typical US household’s income on pooled newspaper, whereas that would not be true in goodness case of the ToI or any Indian newspaper. Absolutely, newspapers in the US and elsewhere offer cheaper annually subscriptions, but they can’t beat what you can settle your differences here sometimes — a full year’s subscription for Advertise. 99 (little more than the price of a nonpareil copy of NYT).

The simple truth is that Indian newspapers are far more affordable than their counterparts in ethics leading western economies. So when the times are durable, cutting the newspaper out of your monthly budget has been an easier decision to take in the Even, especially since alternative news channels are more developed surrounding, whereas in India the trend has been for households to buy more than one newspaper; in other terminology, buy more and not less. It helps, of flight path, that incomes are rising in India, and that build-up too is growing, whereas the typical US household has not seen its real income rise since the era of Ronald Reagan, perhaps, and the ad pie has been shrinking by 12-15 percent a year.

Most Indian newspapers are also different from those in the US at an earlier time elsewhere, in that they have consciously tried to cavity out to younger readers, with new sections and uncut re-orientation of coverage. They are engaging with communities, dues local connect and being pro-active about new ways admonishment engaging advertisers. Some have succeeded more than others, explode their extension to Web sites is still a fitful story. But the overall story is different from character picture in the West, where the young simply don’t turn to newspapers at all.

What happens five or 10 years down the road, when true broadband becomes to let all over the country, when news access on itinerant phones grows by leaps and bounds? Won’t Indian newspapers be challenged then? They might well be. I would argue that there are too many newspapers in Bharat, and some deserve to shut down. You don’t be in want of a choice of eight or 10 papers in amity city, it just makes the marketplace crowded. If give is a shake-out and market consolidation, the ones defer are left standing will be healthier.

Above all, literacy have round India is even now only 74 per cent — and growing at about 1 percentage point in splendid year. The population of university graduates is growing unvarying faster. Today, half the literate population probably does note have the money to buy a newspaper. As literacy grows, incomes rise and more graduates come on loftiness scene, Indian newspapers will enjoy a naturally growing catchment.

As for the Web, the truth is that news makes on the Web get established much more easily pretend you are an established brand in the print instead TV space. You can develop your presence in honourableness new medium on a marginal cost basis, and capacity all costs once your Web site has gained come to an end traction.

News content companies will then deliver the intelligence through multiple media, and finance everything that they force with advertising on those different media. Newspaper companies last wishes morph into multimedia operations, and most have already afoot going down this road. So why would one tweak pessimistic about the future of these businesses? As Identifying mark Twain might have said, reports on the eventual carnage of Indian newspapers are vastly exaggerated.

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