Thursday, February 17, 2005

Mediaah! scoops, Business Standard licks!! R*ut*rs 'stake', Zee-Bhaskar jv stories in print

Don't tomtom your achievements, the wiseman said. We hate doing it. But it's only to underscore the fact that our stories are based on a reasonable degree of market intelligence and research that we write this. Today's Business Standard has two stories that take off from where we left. One, on the rumoured Zee TV-Dainikar Bhaskar tie-up to launch an English newspaper in Bombay, and the other that got us a legal notice and we were asked to delete (or else) the item from the site -- R*ut*rs picking up a 26 % stake in the proposed news, biz and curent affairs channel of the Ti#*s group.

So why are we starring and hashing alphabets? Because we don't think there's any point in getting into a legal tiff with the biggies. We don't have the resources to fight suits filed from Sikkim or the Andamans, though we are sure well-wishers there will oblige. They must appreciate constructive criticism and reportage of developments. It would be interesting to see if The Group sends a legal notice to BS given that the paper has done a few stories on it in the past - first on M*di*n*t, the second on a reviewer plagiarising and now this bit that may harm its business interests.

Back to the news in question: Zee-Bhaskar reportedly put an ad in Mid Day last week looking for field executives. No names were mentioned, just a large media group. Is there need for the Times group to worry if there's a new English paper in Bombay? Not at all. The people who will have to worry are the other morningers: the soon-to-be-launched Hindustan Times (interestingly, Zee’s new head of media marketing is ex-HT and was obviously privy to all of HT’s Bombay plans), Indian Express and Asian Age. There’s Free Press Journal too which is trying to make a dent with Sec D to Z, so that paper shouldn’t be worried at all.

We'll keep you posted on what happens (and who to apply to if there are any jobs going). Hum hain na!