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The Magazine Sector. The Beginning. The 1980’s saw a boom in the publication of magazines in India, not only in English but in the major Indian languages as well.
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The Beginning • The 1980’s saw a boom in the publication of magazines in India, not only in English but in the major Indian languages as well. • The Magazine boom was perhaps set off by the launch of India Today in the mid-seventies, and the new look Illustrated Weekly of India under the editorship of Khushwant Singh.
They cover diverse topics such as politics, law, society, women, the arts, travel, fashion, health, sports, and economy. • Broadly speaking, there are two types of magazines: general interest magazines and special-interest niche (SIN) magazines. • Other magazines to be launched in quick succession in the early eighties included Gentleman, Gentleman Fashion Quarterly (GFQ), Onlooker, The Week, G.
. The new magazines introduced colour, gloss and a snazzy style of reporting which ‘personalised’ and ‘dramatised’ issues and events. Photographs, illustrations, charts and graphs enlivened each page, and the focus was on ‘soft’ features. • High quality printing on imported glazed paper lent the magazines an expensive look. This pleased the advertising community immensely.
The boom continued into the 1990s despite the closure of long-established magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India, Sunday and Bombay. • The growth was spectacular in the case of special interest magazines, especially those dealing with business and finance, computers and electronics, fashion and lifestyles.
The magazine boom almost went bust by the close of the millennium, but by 2006 it was boom time again for magazines. • In 2006 as many as 2600 magazine titles were registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) • At the Indian Magazine Congress in 2007, the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) claimed that magazine advertising was growing faster than newspapers and television - at 24% per annum as against 18% for newspapers and television.
This was perhaps a consequence of the Government’s policy of opening up the print media to foreign investment. So while FDI in the news sector was restricted to a 26% stake, the non-news sector was permitted up to 100% FDI. In 2006-2007, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry approved licenses for over a hundred non-news international titles. • But Readership Surveys by NRS and IRS and circulation audits by ABC seemed to suggest that there was a decline in magazine reading
News magazines were an exception though. India Today (with editions in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Gujarati) was challenged by Outlook and The Week, and later by Hard News, Alive, Tehelka, and Covert.
Growth • Nearly four out of every five Indian periodicals are in the Indian languages. Hindi alone has more than 3,000 periodicals, followed by English with over 2,670. Periodicals in Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu too enjoy a fairly good circulation and readership. • Out of a total of 6,343 periodicals published regularly (with a circulation of 91.3 million copies), 3,428 are weeklies, 955 fortnightlies, 1,471 monthlies, 219 quarterlies and 49 annuals. The circulation of the weeklies is 50.5 million copies while that of the monthlies and fortnightlies is 21.1 million and 12.3 million respectively. The total readership of magazines is 359 million, 68% of which is in Hindi.
Some of the media Organisations are listed below • Press Information Bureau (PIB) • Press Institute of India (PII) • The Press Council of India (PCI) • Audit Bureau of Circulation Ltd. (ABC) • Registrar of Newspaper for India (RNI) • Indian Newspaper Society (INS) • United News of India (UNI) [ News Agency] • Press Trust of India (PTI) [News Agency] • Indo-Asian News Service (INAS) [News Agency]
Press Information Bureau (PIB) • Press Information Bureau (known as PIB) is the nodal agency of the Government of India. Press Information Bureau disseminates information to the print, electronic and new media on government plans, policies, programme initiatives and achievements. PIB is also the Government's nodal agency to facilitate private media. • Press Information Bureau was set up in 1919 as a small Cell, the Press Information Bureau has now grown into a nationwide network of eight Regional Offices and 34 Branch Offices. • Press Information Bureau is gateway for Central Government communication.
Press Institute of India (PII) • Founded in 1963, the Press Institute of India, a first of its kind in Asia, is an independent, non-profit trust, established to create and sustain high and responsible standards of journalism required by a developing country committed to democratic functioning. • PII's training workshops for journalists are conducted in-house or in cities and rural areas of India. There is a strong focus on rural reporting, development journalism and writing on women's empowerment, the panchayat movement, the fight against child labour, the fight for child rights, etc. • Over the years, PII has trained thousands of journalists from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other parts of Asia.
The Press Council of India (PCI) • The Press Council of India is a statutory body in India that governs the conduct of the print media. It is one of the most important bodies that sustain democracy, as it has supreme power in regards to the media to ensure that freedom of speech is maintained. • However, it is also empowered to hold hearings on receipt of complaints and take suitable action where appropriate. It may either warn or censure the errant journalists on finding them guilty.
The Press Council of India (PCI) • The Press Council of India was first set up on 4 July 1966 by the Parliament on the recommendations of the First Press Commission with the object of preserving the freedom of the Press and of maintaining and improving the standards of press in India. • The present Council functions under the Press Council Act 1978. It is a statutory, quasi-judicial body which acts as a watchdog of the press. It adjudicates the complaints against and by the press for violation of ethics and for violation of the freedom of the press respectively.
Composition of PCI • The Press Council is headed by a Chairman, who has, by convention, been a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India (except for the first chairman, Justice J. R. Mudholkar, who was a sitting judge of Supreme Court of India in 1968). • The Council consists of 28 other members of whom 20 represent the press and are nominated by the press organisations/news agencies recognised and notified by the Council as all India bodies of categories such as editors, working journalists and owners and managers of newspaper;
Composition of PCI • 5 members are nominated from the two houses of Parliament and 3 represent cultural, literary and legal fields as nominees of the Sahitya Academy, University Grants Commission (U.G.C.) and the Bar Council of India. • The members serve on the Council for a term of three years. The present Chairman is Justice MarkandeyKatju.
Complaints Procedure • A complaint against a newspaper for any publication the complainant finds objectionable and affecting him personally, or for non-publication of any material, should first be taken up with the editor or other representative of the publication concerned. • If the complaint is not resolved satisfactorily, it may be referred the Press Council of India. The complaint must be specific and in writing and should be filed/lodged within two months of the publication of the impugned news item in case of dailies and weeklies and four months in all other cases, along with the original/photostat copy of the impugned clipping (an English translation if the matter is in a South Asian language).
Complaints Procedure • The complainant must state in what manner the publication/non-publication of the matter is objectionable within the meaning of the Press Council Act, 1978, and enclose a copy of the letter to the editor, pointing out why the matter is considered objectionable. • The editor's reply thereto or published rejoinder, if any, may also be attached to it. A declaration stating that the matter is not pending in any court of law is also required to be filed.
Audit Bureau of Circulation • ABC (India) was founded in 1948, India .The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) of India is a non-profit circulation-auditing organization. It certifies and audits the circulations of major publications, including newspapers and magazines in India. • “ABC” is a voluntary organization initiated in 1948 and is presently operating in different parts of the world. Until that time, the concept of circulation audit was yet to be made in India and the publishers had no means to verify the actual circulation number of publications that they used for advertising and had to depend more on their own judgment.
Audit Bureau of Circulation • Publishers also found it difficult to convince advertisers of the relative values of their publication for the purpose of advertising. • The benefit of ABC certificates of circulation have been availed by advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and organizations connected with print media advertising.
Criteria • The Publisher should be a Member of Indian Newspaper Society (INS) and the Publications should be registered with Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI). • Publisher members must maintain essential books and records to facilitate a proper ABC audit and also appoint an independent firm of Chartered Accountants from amongst the approved panel of auditors named by ABC. Admission of publishers to ABC membership is subject to a satisfactory admission audit. ABC has a system of recheck audit and surprise check audits of publications to be carried out as and when ABC deems appropriate
Registrar of Newspaper for India (RNI) • Registrar of Newspapers for India, more popularly known as RNI, is a government office in India. It came into being on 1 July 1956, on the recommendation of the First Press Commission in 1953 and by amending the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867. • The Press and Registration of Books Act contains the duties and functions of the RNI. On account of some more responsibilities entrusted upon RNI during all these years, the office is performing both statutory as well as some non-statutory functions.
Indian Newspaper Society • The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) (formerly Indian and Eastern Newspaper Society) acts as the central organization of the Press of India, an independent body authenticating circulation figures of newspapers and periodicals in India. • It is an organization which plays a major role in protecting and promoting the freedom of press in India. The society was founded in 1939. Its headquarters are at RafiMarg, New Delhi.
Indian Newspaper Society • INS membership comprises the owners, proprietors and publishers of print media who discusses and suggest various measures to the government regarding the problems related to the newspaper industry. It is a kind of pressure group which works to protect the interest of newspaper industry in particular and print media in general. • Indian newspaper industry today faces problems ranging from rising cost and paucity of newsprint to shrinking revenue from advertisement due to boom in electronic media. The executive committee of INS represents the current 990 members from newspapers, journals, periodicals and magazines.
United News of India (UNI) • United News of India (UNI) is one of the two primary Indian news agencies. Established in 1961, it works in collaboration with several foreign news agencies and partners, including Reuters and DPA. • UNI began its operations on March 21, 1961,though it was registered as a company in 1959. Its head office is located in New Delhi. It employs approximately 325 journalists around India and 250 "stringers" covering news events in other parts of the world, with correspondents in Washington, London, Dubai, Islamabad, Dhaka, Colombo, Kathmandu, Singapore and Sydney. • UNI serves roughly 1000 subscribers globally. United News of India is the first News Agency to place its Stringer in remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Press Trust of India (PTI) • Press Trust of India (PTI) is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 450 Indian newspapers and has a staff of about 2,000 writers spread 150 offices nation wide. • It took over the Indian operations of the Associated Press and Reuters soon after India's independence on August 15, 1947 . It provides news coverage and information of the region in both English and Hindi.
Press Trust of India (PTI) • It exchanges information with several other news agencies including 100 news agencies based outside India, such as Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, The New York Times and Bloomberg L.P.. Major Indian subscribers of PTI include The Hindu, Times of India, the Indian Express, the Hindustan Times, the All India Radio and Doordarshan. • PTI has offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Colombo, Dubai, Islamabad, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, New York and Washington D.C
Indo-Asian News Service (INAS) • Indo-Asian News Service or IANS is a private Indian news agency. • The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) was established in 1986, initially to serve as an information bridge between India and its thriving diaspora in North America. Today it is a full-fledged, 24 by 7 agencies putting out the real-time news from India, South Asia and news of interest to this region around the world. • IANS is divided into six Strategic Business Units (SBUs): IANS English, IANS Hindi, IANS Publishing, IANS Business Consultancy, IANS Solutions, and IANS Mobile.