Interesting "issue"

Lets start with what's hot and special in Chennai "NOW"..Apart from the usual reply that "Chennai itself is soooo hot yaar" types , I could come up with

1. Chennai Super Kings led by aggressive Dhoni - news is that he is shaking a leg with "Ilaya Thalapathi (Young Knight)" Vijay and "I am slim now" Nayanthara for a promo directed by Rajeev Menon
   
2. Steaming hot coffee in Saravana bhavan - evergreen :D
3. hmm..come to think of Kollywood, we have Genelia or may be even Illeana, considering "Jalsa's" tremendous run at Sathyam Multiplex
4. oh!! how can I forget the soon to come AR Rahman live in Chennai this Sunday

However the "hottest of all" award should go to the "India's Masthead", the Times of India - quite close to 30% English speaking population in India read it, which no other competitor has achieved - which is keen on following it's strategy of, "I try to monopolize whichever market I step in". Chennai proved to be an elusive market for this Indian newspaper giant, and some officials at Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd have even accepted the fact that moving into Chennai was like the "Final frontier". It's quite obvious that everybody would want to have a share of this "big apple pie" (let alone not screw up the consumer habit and tastes, a la American Pie shtlye !!!, by offering a lot of blahh and sexed up material in the name of news).

The Times of India started circulation on April 14th 2008 at Rs.2, and quite naturally The Hindu is now being circulated at Rs.2.50 (it was Rs.4 before, for some special reason, as though it never expected a credible competition capable of bringing about a price war). The competition has brought some new flavor and quality, which was very evident in its first Chennai issue.


Times' editors have been harping on this customization aspect that has helped them achieve wide circulation in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai etc and its believed some poaching has already been done.

Though the paper has indeed got a fairly decent response over the first week (coupling its circulation with ARR show coupons etc), it's been studied that changing consumer habits in this industry is a very tough thing, for eg. if we take the operating system we work on, consumer's still prefer working with Windows, even though we may get pissed off to press "ctl+alt+del" when we don't know what happened and then waiting for computer to reboot. However, Gartner has reported that Microsoft has a big task ahead of itself to retain its market share (from Linux, Mac) as consumers are preferring OS that are more agnostic to applications running over it (lets have this argument though it is applicable more for techies). So its observed atleast people might change preferences if another product is satisfying with good functionality and great performance. Though it is not fair to compare the OS and newspaper market, its not that unfair either, since its as hard to make a person shift preference to another newspaper just because it's selling quite cheaply (the discussion is more bordering on emotional elements people attach to the 'daily', like 'hot coffee + hindu crossword' or 'after jogging + Editorial /politics+ Chai' or 'steam bath + home food + Friday review'. There is an inherent assumption that the content is not diluted for lesser price). So may be Times of India has a chance after all...

Another important issue is whether Times of India can sustain its "low price entry strategy". The discussion though applicable at the national level, I am restricting to how it may affect in the Chennai context. The industry depends on imported "Newsprint" for 55% of its usage. Many big dailies like Times of India use this high quality imported print. The not so rosy picture is that current newsprint costs 1000$/ tonne internationally (an increase of close to 50% over last two years). The dailies (english and regional) have already expressed their views that, the rising production costs could be met by

1. Reducing no. of pages or suppliments
2. Resorting to low quality indigenous newsprints
3. Passing the costs to advertisers (ads might become costly)
4. Passing on the cost to consumers

Considering Chennai, the first two options may not be possible for established big national dailies (quality concerns, and obviously they cant do away with the sweet smell of fresh newspaper in the morning). Third option is not a great one as ads might go to a competitive bidder, as Chennai is not a monopolised market. The last option is to be taken seriously, as Times of India can resort to that option for Chennai in near future if it is not able to see breakeven (considering huge circulation risks in achieving target and consumers aversion to shift preferences). Its not that improbable considering Deccan Chronicle has raised its issue price by 50 paise over last few years.

However these are still early days, and lets wait and see whether Times of India will emerge victorious and how other dailies counter attack "content-wise". The commodity prices not seeming to coming down, interesting things are to unfold in this industry !! Bless Globalization !!!!!