"The business we are in is beyond communication": Aroon Purie

Purie spoke about how the media business is more about engaging with the audiences and how people need to keep up with the change.

Businesses need to constantly sense the evolution and be alert of what is happening around them. Not only this, they need to change accordingly. These were some of the thoughts shared by India Today founder and CEO, Aroon Purie, at the recently concluded FICCI-FRAMES 2014.

Purie recalled that India Today was basically a print organisation and at that time, there was just one broadcaster, the government broadcaster. Print at that time commanded around 75 per cent of advertising share. When the state broadcaster opened itself to let the private broadcasters enter, there was a sense that the 25 per cent share of TV ad would be split.

"And we got into TV. In those days (1980s), there was no satellite TV, so we came up with an idea to sell video cassettes. Called 'Newstrack', the cassette used to have 90 minutes of news including 30 minutes of ad. People could rent it from the video library. Later on, the government opened up 30 minutes for private broadcasters and we started out giving news bulletins. And that eventually led to a 24-hour news channel," he recalled.

According to Purie, the consumer, the audience, is shifting in the way they consume content - from print to web to mobile to tablet. "The main thing businesses have to do is to redefine the businesses they are in. People talk about content is king and all that but in the business we are in, it's beyond communication - it's audience engagement. I think we all are in the business of gathering audiences and engaging them. That's the challenge media companies are facing today, whether it's print, TV or any other media," he asserted.

He added that it's not necessary to be the first, but more important to be right. When internet boomed, it was a big challenge even for the journalists who were used to working in a fixed time cycle, weekly or daily. But eventually the 24X7 brought about a change in the mindset. It is no longer top-down. Journalists have to be more interactive and modern today. There is a whole lot of social media today that can thrash their stories because they might know more about the subject than the journalist himself. Journalists have to know what they are talking about; they need to be much smarter, he said.

Purie added that media owners should see this evolution as a business opportunity and it's time they changed. The management's responsibility now is to bring the change in a manner that doesn't disrupt the organisation, he added. Purie acknowledged that it's more difficult for the older organisations to adapt to the change. The traditional media companies were more focused on the old business than on the new emerging businesses. While the newcomers don't have the legacy, although they are able to focus on digital in the beginning, they don't have the experienced people who can create content.

Talking about how 4G will change the concept of consumption, Purie said, "Everybody is trying their own model but it's very difficult to get people to pay on the internet, at least for the valuable content you want them to pay for. The future lies with the mobile. Content is now being pushed on mobile phones. There is some revenue opportunity on mobile as 4G will make it simpler. It will revolutionise the way content is being consumed. It will make downloading easier," he predicted.

"Mobile phone is the next big thing. Organisations will get an opportunity to generate content that holds people on the phone. But for that, a different editorial approach is needed. The content, headline and images will be different," he concluded.