Ananya Roy
Media

Ex-HT employees to launch a Hindi weekly, 'Har Shanivar'

The magazine will be a hard-news offering for ambitious, middle-class youth

C4 Media & Communications, a media company promoted by Chandra Prakash Gupta, former senior associate editor of the Hindi daily, ‘Hindustan’, and mentored by Naresh Mohan, former executive president of ‘Hindustan Times’, is set to launch a weekly Hindi news magazine, ‘Har Shanivar’, on September 3.

A general interest magazine, ‘Har Shanivar’ will have 64-plus, all-colour pages. Five dummy editions have already been rolled out for test marketing. The magazine will be priced at Rs 10.

‘Har Shanivar’, according to the CEO and editor, Chandra Prakash Gupta, will fill the gap in the ‘serious’ political and social news domain left by magazines like the ABP group’s ‘Ravivar’.

“In the current mainstream Hindi weeklies, 60-80 per cent of the matter is translated text picked straight from their English counterparts. You cannot serve the Hindi heartland with such products,” he says.

The magazine will mainly cover hard news, but will also focus on political analysis. It will also have articles on lifestyle trends, sports and social issues.

To target the young readers and the aspirational middle class, the magazine plans to dedicate one-fourth of its content to careers and youth-related issues.

A S Raghunath, former national brand team general manager, ‘Dainik Jagran’, and independent advisor to the venture, says, “Post-liberalisation, most newspapers have become feature oriented and merely dish out city supplements as carriers of local news. Besides, they always package news in a hurry. In-depth coverage of social and political issues will be offered by magazines such as ‘Har Shanivar’.

Speaking of competition from the numerous news channels that also try and bring local news and views into the limelight, Raghunath says, “We have no competition there. Reading habits cannot be substituted by any other medium.”

Naresh Mohan, who has served as president of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) and chairman of UNI, will provide strategic consultation on the commercial and marketing aspects of the magazine.

C4MCPL has its headquarters in New Delhi and it has set up its business offices in eight cities. It has already roped in a few national advertisers such as Videocon, Rasna and Tata Steel.

As of now, the company has set up news bureaus in 14 states, including Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Besides its own distribution network, C4MCPL has tied up with A H Wheeler for countrywide distribution at railway stations.

The magazine will start with a print-run of 50,000 copies.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!

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