Nothing new in this question as we tweeted on it last week. But we didn’t get too many answers, so we posed this to our Wizard with Words today. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the October 31 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. Last week, newspapers in Ahmedabad were shut for three days. In Pune for two. And this is when printwallahs have been complaining that ‘dhanda’ is ‘manda’. What’s your view?
A. Your question seems to suggest to me that continuing publication for the two-three days would have cured all the perceived ills that plague the print media.
I find no substantive logic in this legacy industry convention. Incidentally, I feel this convention has a humane aspect in it, beyond the cold logic of business. Just imagine: the entire community of sellers and hawakers who work round the year during the wee hours when all of us are in deep slumber. Day in, day out, in all seasons. They never fail to deliver the daily newspaper at our doorsteps. They deserve two-three days in a year to celebrate an annual festival with their families.
Finally, even in terms of cold logic of business, I can mention with confidence that no advertising revenue (generally 75/80 per cent of a newspaper’s topline) is lost due to this as advertisers also make their media plans accordingly. The only loss is the cover price revenue which won’t be generally more than 25% topline of a newspaper, leave or take 5/10% plus- minus. In fact I would hazard a guess the savings due to non-publication on those two-three days of holidays would be more than the loss of cover price revenue.
So there is economics in being humane too. If you are really concerned about the future of print media, there are other systemic issues which, if addressed, can make more impact on the sector.