Thursday, July 10, 2003

Media Economics II
By studying the way money works, I am getting a look into the �other side� but I sure will not stop believing in the �fuzzy�. Until now, I had always learnt about the dynamics of media being in creativity, artistry, social connectivity, human psychology etc.
If everything is in terms of money, then anything can be bought or explained. In our last class we discussed the aggressive business practices of the Times of India. The prediction was that the newspaper, once it enters the Chennai market, would completely kill The Hindu. At face value, it feels correct. C�mon, a conservative paper like The Hindu now has a page two (its version of a page three) allegedly because it is insecure.
When I was in Bombay, I read the TOI and for me, what it gives is not news: I found the newspaper unsubstantial and slightly frivolous. I would stick to the Hindu any day. I might initially appear to be a statistical anomaly, a freak maybe, but in the perfect world of numbers, there are meant to be no �unexplainable anomalies�. The �loaded� Hindu finds readership in Chennai while the Delhi market considers it �solidly South-Indian�. So what�s true in Delhi might not hold good in Chennai. As I said in my previous post, a main problem with the money theorists is their belief that the fuzzy area scholars are na�ve. I am nobody to predict a TOI failure in Chennai, but I can certainly say that this is a more conservative town and if the TOI is to make any inroads into this market, it surely is not only through the pricing route that made them successful in the north.
Being abhorrent of formulae, I hate to put it this way, but: Know how money works, it takes care of all the big things, but when you need to tackle the finer problems, understand �fuzzy�.

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