Please note: paid content, not paidContent. At the IMC 2006 organized by the Association of Indian Magazines I found that very few magazines are considering a digital strategy. The session on “sustainable digital strategies for content creation and delivery, customer acquisition and engagement for driving a successful business model” promised much and barely skimmed the surface of what the title of the session promised:
Sreekant Khandekar, CEO of Banyan Netfaqs began by charting the establishment of various media globally, and said that magazines got very little time to establish themselves in India before other media came along - Colour TV, Satellite TV and the Internet. Shailesh Shekhar, Editor HindustanTimes.com said that it’s time to get proactive since even “that 80 year old monolith” doesn’t have a digital strategy. There’s a need for developing the community, and for using digital for making brands more popular. But the paid content strategy has not worked. For a newspaper, the cover price is Rs. 1.5, which is actually the cost of each page, so it is practically given away free. So why ask users to pay for access online?
Deepender Sehajpal, Business Head, Media Estate added that the Internet can sustain niche markets because of low distribution costs, and offerings can be segmented using categories, and certain categories can be made paid. Giving the example of Digg, he said that users will set the agenda. Rohit Saran, Editor Money Today believes that they will have to break the periodicity online. Khandekar suggested that because a large diaspora might be willing to pay for content, one could probably make access free/paid depending on where the user is accessing content from. Also, vanilla news can be free, specialised news - paid. Shekhar said that HT made their epaper free, and saw subscribers grow from 1200 to 112000. From the audience, someone mentioned that one sees offline loyalty being extended to online, so magazines have little to worry about.
I asked the panelists why they aren’t looking at mobile phones for content delivery, since it is a potent distribution channel for textual content. Khandekar said that the screen size is an issue, and Shekhar said that they already have a wap portal. I’m just wondering why they aren’t pushing the mobile model enough, like BCCL pushes Indiatimes via its newspaper. Someone also spoke up against the epaper model, since it isn’t searchable. Earlier, Sam Balsara, Chairman & CMD of Madison Media had said that with increase in competition, magazines will use online and mobile, and every trick in the book to increase subs and readers.

For all those of you who are skeptical about the the online and mobile numbers, do take note of the fact that both the NRS and the IRS - came in for severe criticism for inconsistencies and lack of relevance, not in the least from Ashish Bagga, CEO Living Media Ltd (the India Today Group) and Mahesh Peri, Publisher, Outlook Group. Also, I noted a banner at the show stating that Time Out magazine will be launching in Delhi soon.