National

Multimedia Man

Tarique Ansari takes on broadsheets with his tabloid, Mid-Day

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Multimedia Man
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DAVID is battling Goliath in Bombay's hopelessly one-sided English newspaper market. The Times of India (ABCcirculation: 410,000) is feeling the heat not from other broadsheets, but from the English tabloid Mid-Day (circulation: 90,000). It is a war of unequals. Bigger (Indian Express), older (The Free Press Journal) and better-resourced (The Indian Post) players have bitten the dust here before. But young Tarique Ansari seems to know best how to take on the Old Lady of Bori Bunder.

The numbers tell the story: MidDay's circulation has more than doubled in the past six years; Sunday MidDay sells 100,000 copies; flagship Inquilaab leads the Urdu pack at 40,000; the fledgling Gujarati MidDay is inching towards the 50,000-mark; Radio Mid-Day is ruling the FM airwaves; and overall revenue is second only to The Times. With Mid-Day Television coming next, Bennett, Coleman & Co, rudely shaken out of its stupor, is sitting up and taking notice of what some media analysts call India's smartest publisher.

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Says a former Mid-Day editor: "Tarique Ansari has managed to do what Samir Jain has done to The Times without causing half as much damage to journalism." Adds Rajeev K. Bajaj, editor of the morning tabloid The Daily: "Earlier, MidDay was a rag. Tarique networked the unexploited retail market in such a manner that The Times had to react by launching supplements like Bombay Times."

Mid-Day hit the stands 15 summers ago when a gang of Times reporters led by Behram Contractor grouped under Tari-que's father, Khalid Ansari, and launched the tabloid to compete with the Evening News of India. Mid-Day drove the older compatriot out of the business, but the dream soon soured when Contractor, aka Busybee, deserted the ship to launch The Afternoon Despatch & Courier 10 years ago.

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When papa Ansari left for Dubai for an editorial assignment, Tarique, who had a management degree from the US, was left with the baby. He assumed overall charge, put printing in brother Sharique's care, brought in professionals to edit the paper, got rid of irredeemable publications like Sportsweek, had a go at Bangalore with Sunday Mid-Day but closed it as it didn't take off, sold the loss-making Delhi edition of Mid-Day to Lalit Suri, launched an evening business tabloid Newsday,chopped and changed, and before long had a winner on his hands.

It, of course, didn't hurt that Tarique thought on his feet; that he was indefatigable ("I believe he's very hardworking," says Contractor); that he was willing to take risks (he appointed cricket reporter Ayaz Memon as editor); that he was accessible to his staff unlike his father ("even pressroom boys can meet him directly," says one reporter); and that he looked after his staff (besides paying them well, he gave staffers 50 per cent of their salary as pension after retirement).

The whizkids at Times woke up to the challenge two years ago when All India Radio invited bids for timeslots on its FM channel in Bombay. Tarique opted for just two hours, while Times cornered the rest. But in choosing the 8-9 am and the 6-7 pm slots, Tarique monopolised the time when radio-fitted cars would be ferrying upmarket office-goers to and from work. Tarique is now planning to get into television. His aim: to exploit Mid-Day's enviable news network. "Tarique has an extraordinary gut feeling and his vision keeps expanding," says Memon. "His vision now is to become the most influen-tial mediaman in Mumbai. His aim is multimedia."

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And he is definitely on target. The just-released National Readership Survey says Mid-Day's 600,000 readership (base: 95,80,000) is more than twice that of Express, and 378,000 less than the market leader. For advertisers, that's great news: one column centimetre of space in The Times costs five times as much as it costs in Mid-Day.

But far from hogging the limelight, Tarique prefers to stay away from it, a feat which surprises media critic V. Gangadhar. "You'll have to call me at the office, I don't have my computer with me at home," said Tarique when approached for an appointment, and then ducked all calls. Early this year, when Asian Age columnist Mohammed Aslam mentioned Tarique's marital life, it marked the end of the column. Tarique then was the Bombay franchisee of M.J. Akbar's newspaper.

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Mid-Day now has three editions a day, four on newsier days—the first one going to Pune, 160 km away, and the last complete with pink pages and stockmarket quotations, which is available in the southern parts of the metropolis at 5 pm. But many feel that Mid-Day has plateaued. A morninger, they feel, is the next logical step for Tarique. And for all his savvy, he looked a gift-horse in the mouth when Russy Karanjia's bulldog of a newspaper The Daily came up for sale three years ago. But with Khalid Ansari back in India and taking interest in the stable's activities, Tarique may have the time and the inclination to do some serious thinking in that direction. There's clearly no business like news business.

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