Media: Pioneer's Progress

M E D I A
Pioneer's Progress

There is a surprise for those who thought The Pioneer's burial was merely a matter of when, not whether. Financially, at least, it has turned the corner.

By Suveen K. Sinha

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Which Indian newspaper did Sir Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling write for? The KBC contestant of December 19, 2000, pitched for The Statesman and came away with only Rs 3.20 lakh. The right answer - The Pioneer - would have given him Rs 50 lakh. ''It's the cost of not reading The Pioneer,'' says a smiling Chandan Mitra, the 45-year-old editor of the right answer, tongue firmly in cheek.

The smile continues even when the cheek stops playing host to the tongue. CMYK Printech, which owns The Pioneer, has wiped off its accumulated losses and posted a small profit in 1999-2000, its first since 1989-90. It owes nothing to its suppliers and employees. Salaries-not paid for up to five months at one time- are being paid regularly. A bonus has been declared.

Then And Now

The year was 1996, and industrialist K.K. Birla was puzzled. Chandan Mitra, the executive editor of Birla-owned The Hindustan Times (HT), had resigned and was headed for the much smaller The Pioneer. Says Mitra of his move: ''There was more to do at The Pioneer.'' L.M. Thapar, who owned The Pioneer until May 1998, had plans to launch wire editions in all metropolises. Mitra was sold on the dream.

A rude wake-up call came in early 1998, when, after a nightmarish launch and scrapping of the Mumbai edition, the Thapars concluded they could no more absorb the newspaper's losses, which had mounted to Rs 74 crore in the six years following its Delhi launch in December 1991. That was when Mitra discovered the entrepreneur in him and bought the brand, established in 1864, for Rs 1 lakh. Mitra, who owns 60 per cent of CMYK along with associates, also became its Managing Director. He scrounged for the next 11 months until April 1999, when ICICI, IFCI, IDBI, and the UTI committed Rs 5.3 crore in debt and equity.

It was time to change tracks. The Thapars wanted The Pioneer to grow out of its Uttar Pradesh-centric shell into a national publication. ''They should have focused on quality. Instead, they got into the numbers game,'' says TBWA Anthem's Executive Media Director, Gopinath Menon, of the Thapar strategy. Mitra decided not to push the circulation (the Delhi and Lucknow editions sell about 65,000 each) and looked elsewhere for revenues.

The size of the marketing department was halved to cut costs. The Pioneer re-positioned itself as a content provider and pulled out of operations: its two printing presses were sold; it formed a subsidiary, Pioneer.Net, for internet-related businesses, and sold 51 per cent in it to an undisclosed buyer for Rs 10 crore; a 50:50 joint venture was set up with Calcutta-based Rainbow Productions for developing TV software. CMYK also hopes to raise Rs 25 crore this year through private placement of debt and equity.

Mitra is confident that CMYK will be a major media house in three years. But The Pioneer newspaper has not yet achieved cash break-even and has to shell out Rs 7 lakh in interest every month. Pushing advertisement revenue beyond last year's Rs 8.67 crore will be tough, given that ht and The Times of India leave little for the others in Delhi. Mitra says ads will come in since a second newspaper like The Pioneer is bought by choice and, therefore, gets more attention. But he will be hard-pressed to replace the essentially one-time income from portal sale. And creating TV content isn't a cakewalk. As Menon says: ''The test will be to be price competitive and get into the top channels.'' What can be said with certainty is that this year is crucial.

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