Hindustan Times in revamp mode; prepares Mumbai entry

The tremor of battle between Hindustan Times and The Times of India will soon be felt in Mumbai too. Hindustan Times is marching towards the nation's commercial capital with carefully calibrated strategic plans that would undoubtedly have a long-term effect in both the Mumbai and Delhi markets.

Preparations for the much-anticipated clash have already begun at Hindustan Times, in fact. While the booking of machinery (it takes 14-15 months to reach the country) and the finalization of the plot have already happened, the publication has also made some strategic moves in Delhi which could have repercussion in Mumbai. The newspaper group is also moving ahead aggressively in the capital, trying to build a stronghold in the market before invading Mumbai, where its archrival rules almost unchallenged.

Recently, Hindustan Times carried out a total revamp of its main newspaper and supplements in an attempt to try and give the daily a contemporary look. While the paper has gone all-colour (except for the editorial and the stock market pages) it also sports a changed masthead design, sans the ear panels. "We continued to stick with black-and-white for the editorial pages as we wanted to maintain the sanctity of the section," explains Anand Bhardwaj, vice-president, marketing, HT Media Ltd. "And the stock market pages didn't actually require colour."

To get a larger number of youth into its fold, the publication has also strategically changed its sports pages in the middle of the main newspaper into a pullout. "It has been done keeping our young readers in mind," Bhardwaj justifies the move. The logic is that when elders in the family read the front page, younger member of the family are interested in reading the sports section. "A sports pullout allows both the senior as well as the young member to read their favorite section at the same time," Bhardwaj adds.

The redesign of the HT City masthead, the launch of supplements such as HT Premier (on movies and the entertainment industry), and Sunday magazine Brunch, confirm the newspaper's desire to shed its conservative image and look contemporary and liberal. Brunch, the newspaper claims, has been quite a success for Hindustan Times, generating interest not only among readers but also among advertisers. "The advertiser's response to Brunch has been very encouraging, especially with brand owners such as Marlboro," points out Bhardwaj. "Marlboro does not use newspapers frequently, but it has taken four pages of space in our current issue of Brunch."

Another editorial change with an eye on younger readers is the re-christening of career supplement HT Careers as HT PowerJobs. Apart from structural changes such as providing more career tips and information, the supplement has also undergone a strategic ploy - the supplement's release day has been rescheduled to Tuesdays, a day before The Times of India's Ascent appears.

Hindustan Times' efforts at increasing youth readership are easy to understand. It is in the reader's mid-twenties that the paper sees the strongest probability of him or her displaying a change in reading preference. "When one gets used to a newspaper at that age, he or she is likely to continue with the same paper till the age of 40," says a media analyst.

However, the changes that Hindustan Times and its supplements have undergone are aimed not only at broadening readership base in the capital, but also at building morale and muscle in the run-up to the paper's Mumbai launch. According to industry source, Hindustan Times is fairly confident about its entry into Mumbai, and claims that readers in the city are looking for a change - a need-gap that the paper plans to plug with its changed image and editorial content.

Apart from shoring up editorial content and look-and-feel, Hindustan Times also has a bullish pricing strategy for Mumbai - our reliable sources inform that Hindustan Times would price its Mumbai edition at Rs 1.50. Currently, The Times of India sells at Rs 3.50 in Mumbai, whereas in Delhi, both dailies sell at Rs 1.50. Interestingly, there is speculation that the Sahara Group is also planning to launch a newspaper in Mumbai, priced at - hold your breath - Re 1. Evidently, the competition in the English newspaper markets in Delhi and Mumbai is just about heating up… © 2004 agencyfaqs!