No better person than a print veteran like our Wizard with Words to comment on the Association of Indian Magazines angst. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the November 16 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. The Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) has petitioned the I&B minister that even though it has 20% of print readership it gets less than a percent of government spends. Fair ask, would you say?
A. So far I know, the advertising rates, as approved by government, are always below commercial rates of any publication and, more often than not, the rates are not high enough to cover DVC even. So govt advts can’t shore up the beleaguered fortune of the commercial viability of magazines. Secondly, most of the government ads are topical in nature. With a variety of frequency of magazines (ranging from weekly, fortnightly to monthly), the scheduling becomes a challenge specially for topical ads. Some magazines do publish state features and they get support from concerned state governments.
For magazines, it’s better to give more quality content for readers to experience and justify higher cover price to improve profitability. Finally, magazines generally offer high production quality and high profile advertisements. The advertising copy of government communication appeals to its functionality and not necessarily on creative aesthetics. That might bring down the overall environment of the magazines for high profile brands to participate. These are my top-of-mind thoughts and I feel it’s in the interest of magazines of some stature to avoid this path in their own interest.