Mid-Day scraps morning edition in Mumbai

The afternooner shifts its focus to its core audience, scraps its morning edition from February 2

Mid-Day has decided to do away with its morning edition in Mumbai from February 2. This has been done to further strengthen the tabloid’s afternoon edition and focus on its target audience, which consists in the main of young urban mobile professionals of India (YUMPIs).

Mid-Day is also published from Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune, but Mumbai is the only city where it has two daily editions.

Mid-Day started its morning edition in Mumbai three years ago, reckoning it to be convenient and logistically more feasible for Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd, its publisher. This was also considered to be a reactionary step to combat Mumbai Mirror – a morning tabloid launched by the Times Group.

Mid-Day scraps morning edition in Mumbai

Talking to afaqs!, Manajit Ghoshal, chief executive officer, Mid-Day Infomedia, the group’s print and web subsidiary, says, “We are refocusing on the YUMPI segment. We started the morning edition to utilise our resources, but found later that the morning slot is cluttered. People don't have the time to read so many newspapers in the morning. We also found that the consumption pattern of Mid-Day was such that the maximum pick-up of copies took place in the afternoon. Third, the time limit for filing news reports was getting reduced because of the morning edition. On the whole, we found that the morning edition was meaningless.”

The tabloid will now focus all its resources on the afternoon edition of Mid-Day in Mumbai, which will be supported by constant updates of the web product and a new free SMS news service between 9 am and 7 pm.

Ghoshal denies that the decision had anything to do with the prevailing market conditions. “We are not doing this because of the economic slowdown,” he says. “It is being done to strengthen our core target group. We are estimating that our readership figures will increase further as a result of this focus on the paper’s high pass-around value.”

It is claimed that Mid-Day’s morning edition has a circulation of around 50,000 copies in Mumbai, which will now be redirected to the afternoon offering. Ghoshal informs afaqs! that the advertisers of the morning edition will be shifted to the afternoon edition. The afternooner commands a circulation of two lakh copies in Mumbai.

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Mid-Day Manajit Ghoshal