Link to video trailer here.
In the previous essay, I have discussed structural changes in the Indian print media starting from the early 1990s. The changes in the newsroom functioning, changes in the revenue generation, changes in the subscription models, changes in the dissemination of news and changes in the meaning of the end-users as product consumers from readers. However, with the onset of electronic media in the form of 24×7 format and the internet becoming a popular medium of disseminating news, the newspaper industry in India looked towards a model that maximized profit. In this essay, we discuss the new business model with a particular focus on The Times Group, one of the earliest to adopt it. This helped it to become one of the world’s largest media group[i].
Medianet & Times Private Treaties (TPTs)
“Dynamism of the media industry requires an entrepreneurial spirit”.
This phrase used to be a popular industry proverb in 2000 in the Indian media industry, and the BCCL group or The Times of India group led by Sameer Jain made this proverb as their business reality Times Medianet and Times Private Treaties.
“Commercially, Samir Jain was the best thing that could have happened to The Times of India. But he destroyed an institution and made it a great big factory,” Ashish Nandy (Malhan: 2013).
Any business is always grounded on or/and influenced by a business model. A business model can be defined as:
A sum of all interrelated architectural, co-operational and financial arrangements designed and developed by an organization presently and in the future, as well as all core products and/ or services the organization offers or will offer, based on these arrangements that are needed to achieve its strategic goals and objectives. [ii]
As evident, this is a ‘directive’ that governs all the products, services, and information flows of any profit-making enterprise/corporation, including various business actors and their roles, into a structure that systematizes and ensures revenue growth. For the Times Group, the ‘directive’ or the business model has governed and ensured the group’s revenue growth past two and a half decades is “Samir Jain”, the current vice-chairperson of BCCL. “Quite simply, the Indian media story can be divided into two parts – pre-Samir Jain and post-Samir Jain,” says Malhan. [iii]
This quote from a former journalist of The Times of India is not an exaggeration as similar references prominently came up in my discussions with many senior journalists and marketing staff of the Times of India during my regular interaction with them. Most of my respondents agreed that the current form of the Indian media in general and news media, in particular, is largely influenced by the operational/management/ editorial changes brought in by Samir Jain in the early 1990s.
My respondents, especially senior journalists at the Times group and other media houses, pointed out the central principal of Samir Jain’s way of working from the day he took charge of the Times Group. He sought to make the publications a superior profitable platform for the advertisers. Every aspect of his business has to be aligned to deliver that. Gradually, such a ‘mantra’ became the benchmark for any decisions and/or initiatives at the Times Group print media platforms, including The Times of India, Navbharat Times, and electronic media platforms like Times Now Channel and Radio Mirchi FM Channel.
The senior journalists at the Times group acknowledged openly about “aggregating readership for the investor” to the point that if the newspaper has to choose between following news coverage of national importance and Times Group’s target audiences’ interest in a local issue, the latter will get preference in the columns of the newspaper. Since the 90s, The Times of India has been continuously accused of `dumbed-down’ journalism. It destroyed the great power of the editorial team. It paved the way for advertorials and entertainment into the mainstream newspaper. The Times group introduced even the concept of selling some of the columns in its supplements. However, The Times Group went further ahead from space selling in supplements to newer forms of revenue generation in Times Medianet & Times Private Treaties.
Times Medianet
In 2003 Times Group formed a business initiative known as Medianet. This subsidiary business enterprise was given the task of initiating “paid content” or, in simpler terms ‘selling news’. It is important to mention here that the concept of ‘paid news’ shouldn’t be confused with paid advertisements or advertorials, which comes under the category of ‘sponsored features’. Paid news shouldn’t also be confused with special supplements that can be seen inserted into the main newspaper, which also comes under ‘sponsored features’. Now the question arises, what is paid news then? Paid news is the promotion of any particular event/ product/person/cause, which is made ‘news worthy’ by paying a particular price. This could include endorsing a particular consumer product, lifestyle or fashion goods and allied services, hospitality sector stakeholders like hotels/restaurants, cinema, celebrity etc.
Medianet facilitated paid news by offering advertising like rate cards for editorial content in lifestyle supplements of Times Group publications. Medianet offered exclusive coverage, i.e. guaranteed space in the newspaper and ensured the audience for the advertisers. The problem with such a ‘paid promotion’ is that the newspaper readers are not provided with any marking with such paid content. Hence they cannot differentiate paid content and regular news content. That means they consume ‘media promoted news as regular news, which is a gross violation of media ethics and a reader’s rights. [iv]
Times Private Treaties (TPTs)
Launched in 2004, Times Group came up with another innovative business initiative known as Times Private Treaties. This new business unit bartered advertising space and media promotion through ‘positive’ articles/coverage in return for equity in client companies. The business objective of this department was to establish long-term financial and advertising partnerships with companies looking for growth using its range of market-leading publications, including The Times of India, The Economic Times, Navbharat Times, and television, radio, the internet, outdoor advertising and magazines.
This business initiative from Times Group was not entirely transparent in terms of using its main publications (news media) for increasing its business revenue. The earlier ‘paid news’ content claimed to be ‘restricted’ only to the lifestyle and entertainment section (page3 news) was now extended to mainstream news through Times Private Treaties. Despite criticism from the peer group and other sections of the society, such a business practice had led to enormous growth and profit in the Times Group’s revenue story.
Within four years of launching Times Private Treaties, the unlisted BCCL at the Bombay Stock Exchange became one of India’s largest private equity investors with ‘investments’ estimated to be around Rs. 1,500 crores across 140 companies in media & entertainment, retail, consumer durables, aviation etc. Amid concerns from the government and peer groups, Times Group changed TPT name to Brand Equity Treaties Limited in 2010 to escape further action of government financial regulatory agencies.
[i] Some of the observations in this essay has been taken from my ethnographic study of Navbharat Times newsroom in Delhi during 2015-2017.
[ii] Al-Debei,M.M., El-Haddadeh, R., & Avison, D. (2008). “Defining the business model in the new world of digital business,” in Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).pp.1-11.
[iii] Sangita P Menon Malhan. (2013). The TOI Story: How a newspaper Changed the Rules of the Game. Harper Collins India.
[iv] The Editors Guild of India had expressed concern over presenting advertorial as news. This news article dated 23rd December 2009 clearly explains the practice of newspapers publishing ‘paid news’ as news.
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/distinguish-between-news-and-advertisements/263498, accessed on 29th March 2021.
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Devanjan Khuntia is an Assistant Professor in Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Science, G D Goenka University.