Hindi Media

Reports coming in from different sources say that Zee group is all set to take over India leading Hindi daily Amar Ujala. The deal size is said to be worth 1100 crore rupees. Zee is expected to inform BSE about the deal on Wenesday. Rajul Maheshwari will remain director till December 31 and Sunil Mutreja will act as CEO of Amar Ujala after take over by Zee. Amar Ujala is 4th largest Hindi daily in India as per Indian Readership Survey (IRS) behind Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar and Hindustan and ahead of Rajasthan Patrika. It is assumed that if the take over takes place  war between leading regional players in Hindi belt will resume. In India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh Amar Ujala is in direct competition with the market leader and world's largest read daily Dainik Jagran. In western UP there is close fight between the two while Jagran has a clear edge in eastern and central UP. In Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir Amar Ujala is the market le...

hindimedia1@gmail.com Updated list of recent and proposed launches is as follows: Metro7days (daily) Mumbai May 22 Lokmat Samachar (daily) (Jalgaon) May 15 (may change) Lokmat Samachar (daily) (Pune) Date not finalised Lokmat Samachar (daily) (Mumbai) Date not finalised Hamwatan (weekly) Bhopal June 2011 Tehelka Hindi (magazine) National edition June 2011 Swabhiman Times (daily) Gwalior Date not finalised Hindustan (daily) Moradabad July 2011 (proposed) Status update: Land purchased Hindustan (daily) Aligarh Date not finalsied Dainik Bhaskar (daily) Dhanbad April 17 (launched) Hindustan Jobs (weekly) National edition May 8

Naveen Joshi Executive Editor of Hindustan Uttar Pradesh is on his way out. Sources say that he may quit in next one week. Recently at a meeting held in Lucknow his powers were drastically cut by the new management. Ashok Pandey who is at present looking after the Hindustan Kanpur is said to be in the race to replace him at Lucknow.

Reliable sources in Hindustan say Rajkumar Singh has replaced Ravi Pant as editor at Hindustan, Varanasi. Pant has gone on a long leave and is said to be headed towards any other organisation. He may announce his resignation soon.

Manoranjan Singh News Editor, i next is quitting to join Hindustan as state coordinator of Bihar-Jharkhand. He will be based at Ranchi. He was with i next for past three years. He came here from Partika and has earlier worked with Dainik Bhaskar and Rashtriya Sahara.

There is going to be major reshuffling in the Kanpur's print media space. Amar Ujala under the leadership of Dinesh Juyal its new editor is trying to reinvent itself. A number of people are on the verge being out from the organisation while others waiting to come in. Some have already left the newspaper or have been shown the door. According to reliable sources Dainik Jagran may lose some of its reporters to the rival. One of them is looking after the crime beat. While after Sanjiv Mohan Sharma moving out to Amar Ujala from Hindustan few more wickets from his earlier organisation may fall. The whole excercise is to rejunevate the newspaper which has lost a major chunk of its readership to the rival Dainik Jagran. Its tabloid Compact has also failed to make an impact and dent the readership base of i-next.

Hindustan is preparing to relaunch its Kanpur edition. Executive editor UP Navin Joshi and CEO, HMVL Amit Chopra visited Kanpur on Friday and had a meeting. Ashok Pandey resident editor was present at the meeting.

Brajendra Pratap Singh who is at present senior reporter at Hindustan Kanpur will join in as Chief Reporter of the newspaper's Allahabad edition. He has been entrusted with the responsibilty at a juncture when there is stiff competition going on between the existing players. He is known for his work on water issues and Ganga cleanliness drive. On the other hand Sunil Singh from i-next Kanpur has joined Compact Gorakhpur as Senior Sub Editor. The tabloid from Amar Ujala group is to be launched by 23 March in Gorakhpur.

One of the prominent players of Hindi print media space Hindustan Media Ventures Limited is all set to launch its tabloid Spark. The company already publishes Hindi daily Hindustan and is part of the HT media group. As per our sources a meeting was held recetly in Delhi in a five star hotel located at Bhikaji Cama Place to frame the strategy for the launch. The first edition is supposed to be launched by mid April. This comes in the wake of expansion drive by Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran of their tabloid newspapers Compact and i-next.

Four people have joined Hindustan, Kanpur of which three are from Amar Ujala, Lucknow and one is from Dainik Jagran Dinesh Mishra Amar Ujala, Lucknow Sachin Mishra Amar Ujala, Lucknow Mansi, Amar ujala, Lucknow Rakesh Pal, Dainik Jagran, Meerut

Courtsey: exchange4media.com HT Media more than doubled its net profit in the third quarter ended December 31, 2009 to Rs 184.2 million from Rs 78.2 million in Q3 FY09 due to sharp increase in circulation and advertising revenues. The company has demerged its Hindi business that includes daily ‘Hindustan’, magazines ‘Nandan’ and Kadambini’ during the quarter for Rs 1.4 billion and has temporarily shut down the loss making JV with BCCL, ‘Metro Now’. However, the company’s total revenue decreased by 3 per cent at Rs 3,289.8 million on standalone basis. On consolidated basis, the revenues of the company have increased 6 per cent to Rs 3,661 million from Rs 3,457 million on account of 30 per cent increase in circulation revenues from Rs 390 million to Rs 508 million. This has been largely due to increase in the number of copies circulated, improved realisations and increase in cover price effective Q1 FY10. The advertising revenues showed a growth of 3 per cent from Rs 2,780 million to Rs ...

The Times of India (TOI) continues to be the leading daily of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT), followed by its foe-turned-friend, Hindustan Times (HT), with total readerships of 32.66 lakh and 32.44 lakh respectively. In fact, the gap between the two dailies has narrowed down from about 5 lakh readers in R1, 2008 to only 22,000 in the current round of IRS (R2, 2009). However, like most leading dailies in this market, both the English dailies have lost readers in the current round of IRS. While TOI has lost 1.35 lakh readers, HT is down by 86,000 readers. For TOI, it's about 4.15 lakh readers less than R1, 2008. The country's leading English daily had lost close to 3 lakh readers in the city a year ago, which it still hasn't managed to compensate for. Though it had managed to maintain a status quo by adding a marginal 4,000 readers, the current loss of readers has increased the gap. TOI's biggest loss has been in West Delhi (60,000) and South Delhi (53,00...

Vijay Narayan Singh who resigned from i-next few days ago is going to join Dainik Bhaskar's Raipur edition as DNE. Prior to joining i-next he was with Hindustan. Another DNE from i-next has tendered his resignation. Sumant Pandey who was till now with bilingual daily's Allahabad edition has resigned. However his next destination is not known yet. Earlier he was also with Hindustan.

In one of the major developments of saturday Hindi print media was shaken whose after effects will be seen in coming months. While one of the most reverred editors of Hindi print media space Mrinal Pandey resigned from tbe post of editor of Hindustan. Shashishekhar has resigned from Amar Ujala and will be joining Hindustan on September 1. The industry is shaken with this development. Hindustan which is on a major expansion drive in the Hindi heartland is sure to witness few more exits. On the other hand Amar Ujala may also see some of the people moving to other destinations probably Hindustan.

Hindustan will launch its Bareli edition on September 1 thus extending its reach to Rohilkhand region of UP and Kumayun of Uttarakhand. Anil Bhaskar is going to be the Resident Editor of the said edition who was earlier with Rashtriya Sahara. On the other hand Dainik Bhaskar is all set to relaunch its Delhi edition. Some senior hands from other media organisations have joined the group.

Sources in the Hindustan say recruitment for its proposed Gorakhpur edition will begin in the month of September. Thus paving the way for many more faces changing their loyalty from one group to another in search of a better opportunity. Bareli edition of the newspaper will be launched somewhere in between September 15 to first week of October. while launch of seperate Ghaziabad edition has been put on hold as the newspaper is in search of space for its proposed unit.

Pramod is quitting Amar Ujala Dehradun to join Hindustans' soon to be launched Bareli edition as DNE upcountry.

hindimedia1@gmail.com Hindi print media space will very soon be witness to tabloid war among the major newspaper groups. Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala are already in the fray with i-next and compact. Dainik Bhaskar after the launch of Patrika from Bhopal has started publication of DB Gold. Ajay Agarwal who broke away from Amar Ujala is now spearheding the assault in the western Uttar Pradesh with his own tabloid DLA. He is all set to enter newer territories including editions from Lucknow and Kanpur. Hindustan and Rajasthan Patrika are the two major groups who have kept away from this war and were busy expanding into newer areas with their broadsheet products. However Hindustan after the launch of i-next from Patna and the proposed launch from Ranchi is mulling over the idea of launching a tabloid, which may be named, Spark. Dainik Jagran’s tabloid i-next has made its presence felt in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar. At present it is being published simultaneously from Kanpur, Luck...

This news appeared first at www.exchange4media.com © exchange4media 2008 The Hindi newspaper space is becoming exciting and competitive. While on the one hand, existing players are venturing into newer markets, new players are also entering the fray. The increasing competition is resulting in an inevitable price war. The latest to witness a price war is Dehradun, Uttarakhand, where Amar Ujala, Dainik Jagran and Hindustan have reduced their rates by Re 1. While Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran reduced their rates from Rs 3 to Rs 2 from June 6 onwards, Hindustan followed a day later, reducing its rate also from Rs 3 to Rs 2. Giving the reason for reducing the rate, Sunil Mutreja, President-Marketing, Amar Ujala, said, “It is an attempt to expand the market and increase print penetration in Uttarakhand. Dehradun today has a circulation of 77-80 lakh publications in all, and has the potential for the circulation to go up to 150 lakh. Amar Ujala will benefit the best with the price cut as we ar...

© exchange4media 2008 Close on the heels of an intensive ad campaign, HT Media Ltd has announced the launch of its revamped Hindi daily, Hindustan. The fastest growing Hindi daily, as per the latest IRS data, the revamped Hindustan is eyeing a bigger share of the Hindi daily market. The daily offers its readers all the vital information and news delivering its brand promise of ‘Hindustan gets you prepared’. The price of the revamped Hindustan remains unchanged at Rs 3 and Rs 3.50, depending on the market it is selling in. Nilanjan Shome, Chief Marketing Officer, HT Media Ltd, said, “With the recent market surveys of the Indian media suggesting that Hindi is the medium of instruction for more than 50 per cent of the Indian population, Hindustan decided to re-work its positioning and target this extensive market. To be able to cater to the growing young global Indian population, the newspaper has undergone a complete re-engineering in the terms of its content, design and presentation, th...