Hindi Media

Noted filmmaker Prakash Jha is said to have plans for starting a Bihar-Jhakhand based magazine as well as a television news channel. He ia also said to be in talks with Jansatta Delhi based Hindi daily from the Indian Express group for a franchisee edition.

Inext, the compact daily of Jagran Prakashan Ltd (JPL), which publishes ‘Dainik Jagran’, is launching its Allahabad edition on December 27. This is the paper’s sixth edition after Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut, Agra and Varanasi. Sanjay Gupta, CEO and Chief Editor, JPL, said, “It is the overwhelming success of Inext in Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut, Agra and Varanasi which encouraged us to come out with a sixth edition with Allahabad within a period of one year. There are many more editions in the pipeline. The people of Allahabad are eagerly waiting for the new daily, thanks to its 360-degree campaign titled ‘Hum Hai naye, andaaz kyun ho purana’, which connects to the TG with a bang. The campaign includes outdoor, print, road shows, and cable scrollers on TV, among others.” Shailesh Gupta, Director, JPL, added, “Inext fits well in our scheme of things since it caters to a upwardly mobile segment of readers who are youthful in their approach towards life and are ready to experiment with the offeri...

Daily News the Hindi daily from the Rajasthan Patrika group is slated to enter Indore in January. At present it has only one edition from Jaipur. The newspaper is said to be part of a grandiose plan from the group to fulfil its ambition of having a national presence. Which is being hampered due to the regional identity associated with the flagship brand Rajasthan Patrika. The newspaper is the only Hindi daily to have editions down the vindhyas in Tamilnadu and Karnataka. However Jagran is said to be mulling over plans to enter these markets. The sources say Indore edition of Daily News may be launched on 26 January earlier it was slated for a 10 December launch.

The Dehradun edition of Dainik Jagran is on the lookout for people after a mass exodus from its rank and file to the Hindustan and Rashtriya Sahara The situation has been aggravated by the fact that the group plans to very soon launch another edition of its tabloid Inext from the hill state.

The cutthroat competition in the print media is clear, especially in the Hindi daily space. This is visible with the almost simultaneous launch of Patiala edition by two big players in the Hindi newspaper market – Dainik Jagran and Dainik Jagran. The launch of Dainik Jagran in Patiala was scheduled on December 21, while Bhaskar was launched a day later. With the launch in Patiala, Dainik Jagran – which boasted of coming up with 32 editions in India – has launched its fourth edition in Punjab, and so has Dainik Bhaskar. The initial print of neither Jagran nor Bhaskar was available, but according to industry sources, it is in the range of 30,000-35,000 copies. Speaking on the reason to launch a Patiala edition, Jagdish Sharma, Managing Editor, Dainik Bhaskar, said, “The launch and success of Dainik Bhaskar in the Amritsar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana markets have given us a better insight into the Punjab markets, and has been a great lead up to our launch. In Chandigarh, which is misconceived...

This has been received in response to an earlier post Prabhat Khabar loses three to Sanmarg on this blog as a comment from blogger Magadh. Within last three months Prabhat Khabar's, Patna edition has lost two men each from reporting, circulation and advertisement, three from accounts and four from editorial to other newspapers. Among them are included circulation, accounts and buisiness head.

The Patna edition of the Kolkata based Hindi daily Sanmarg has hit the stands in the beginning of third week of December. The initial reports coming from there say that owing to limited resources the edition may not be able to make a dent into the market share of already existing players. The edition is based on franchisee model adopted by English daily The Pioneer.