aside 8 Dec

Indian Media

One thing I like about India are the dailies. The newspapers are definitely more entertaining than the newspapers back home – I find media overall to be more creative than good ole’ British Columbia but I suspect that this is mostly due to the Olegarchies that run our media. No need to compete, there is no real competion.

Lots of activity in India as of late. When I initially arrived, Richard Branson and Cherie Blair were hanging out in Delhi, Vladimir Putin was sighted in and throughout India (he followed me to Hyderabad and Bangalore on my trip there but we didn’t get a chance to meet) amidst the possibility of enlarging the UN Security Council, and Aishwaria Rai was hanging out in Agra promoting the Taj Mahal as one of the new seven wonders of the world. Have you cast your vote yet?

Excerpt from the Hindustan Times for December 1st, 2004:

Ash to vote for Taj Mahal


ON WEDNESDAY, Aishwarya Rai will click on www.new7wonder.com to vote in favour of the Taj Mahal as part of a campaign for redrawing the Seven Wonders Of The World list. A Swiss NGO is mobilising public opinion to re-draw the list. The Taj Mahal does not figure in this list and is termed the eighth wonder. HTC

There was another article which I found equally interesting – a piece about a book created by a team of UK scientists entitled 100 things to do before you die. Amongst the items which were cited, I found the following items to :

EXTRACT YOUR DNA
Spit gargled salt water into dilute washing-up liquid and dribble ice cold gin down the glass’s side. DNA appears as white lumps.

ATOMIC NAME
Write your name in atoms at IBM’s Almaden research lab. Also, go look at an atom. Many univ labs have the equipment ot trap and cool atoms.

DIAMOND MAN
LifeGem of Chicago will take a few grains of your cremated remains, subject them to pressure and make you, 18 weeks later, into a sparkling, one carat diamond.

LEARN CHOCTAW
A Native American language with two past tenses – one for giving info which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else.

The other thing I like about India is that the newspapers with bigger distribution also have different editions – daytime edition, morning edition, evening edition, etc.

If you’re a news junkie like me, you can relate. I’m currently missing my Economist subscription.

  • sonali

    Indian Advertisers held to Ransom by IBF

    The festive season is on and this is buzzing time for all advertisers in the Indian advertising industry. Bang on this time all TV channels have unilaterally decided to increase rates by 25% through a surcharge route across all current and new deals…

    This makes it incredibly difficult for all advertisers to even digest this very fact leave alone the notion of implementing it. This is a tragic and historic event going on in the Indian media industry which leaves all advertisers high and dry, when they should be raking in money during festive season sales.

    HOW CAN SOMETHING LIKE THIS TO HAPPEN….? Don’t tell me this is Hitler’s era in the Indian media Industry.

    AAAI which is the agencies association has completely opposed to this entire hullabaloo and indicated that most of the clients are dead against the surcharge. They have also written to all IBF member channels the schedules be carried uninterrupted as per pre-agreed terms without any surcharges. As this goes on, some clients have already threatened legal action against channels if their spots are not carried as per schedule.

    AAAI categorically refuses channels acting in unison and increasing rates by fixed percentage by certain rates as against the idea of IBF advising its member channels to renege on existing agreement deals. As this drama goes on, IBF is allowing PSU and Govt clients to advertise without surcharge. They are also incentivizing clients to come directly to them by not applying the surcharge and running on existing rates. They have gone ahead and also accepting campaign from non AAAI agencies with a lower surcharge of 10%.

    Hmmmm….. this gets murkier day by day.

    More confusion….IBF has now announced 1 month waiver for advertisers complying to the surcharge and exempting southern TV channels (who have decided against IBF here)….again witness the arbitrary approach taken by IBF here.
    What seemed to be rates disagreement earlier now seems to be a divide and rule policy only that it is not implemented by Britishers anymore but a funny Indian association called IBF.

    ISA (Indian Society of Advertisers) has also completely trashed this whole idea of surcharges which do not make any sense.

    Finally, what no one realizes is that, it hits us as consumers cos it is a direct impediment in the communication process between the advertiser and consumers, by media channels which are just communication couriers. Imagine you not coming to know about a great product which you did wait for quite some time to buy….?