>From Our Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI: Yet another price war has begun among the two top
English dailies of Delhi to establish their supremacy with the
Hindustan Times offering daily edition of 42 pages in just one
rupee and the Sunday edition of 52 pages in Rs 2.

The Times of India was also toying with the idea of reducing the
price to one rupee since past six months, but the decision was
kept on the hold. It has to await now return of its bosses from
abroad before taking the decision to join the war.

The local executives, however, sought to counter the Hindustan
Times' drive by coming out with an announcement thanking the
readers on the occasion of crossing half a million mark and
pointing out that it is fastest growing English daily in Delhi.

The new prices announced by the Hindustan Times with effect from
last Friday have been touted as the 75th anniversary price,
though insiders say the real reason was threat to its No 1
position in the capital because of a very fast rise of
circulation and advertisement revenue  of the Times of India.

It was the Times of India which has started the price war four
years ago by reducing its daily price to Rs 1.50, forcing the
Hindustan Times and others to follow suit. 

The Hindustan Times is, however, taking the lead this time as
first came the announcement of repeating the classified
advertisements at a throwaway price of just Rs 100 and heavy
discounts on repeat display advertisements and now the price cut.

Interestingly, both the newspaper houses have limited the price
war to their English dailies as even today Hindustan, the Hindi
daily of Hindustan Times Group, and Navbharat Times, the Hindi
daily of the Times of India Group, sell at Rs 2 per copy and
that too with comparatively very less number of pages -- 12 and
10 respectively.

When the first price war began, the newspaper hawkers and
vendors had, however, gone on strike as reduced price meant
reduced margin and ultimately it was agreed that they will get
the commission of 52 paise per copy.

The Hindustan Times witnessed an immediate increase of demand by
about 80,000 copies, but as a newspaper agent disclosed many
hawkers may be very well selling the newspaper as "raddi" at 55
to 60 paise per copy and thus earn 7 to 12 paise per copy. 

Hindustan Times's new Executive President Deepak Shourie, who
wants to become a wizard of the newspaper market economy, says
the newspaper profession itself is a competing one. "We have
done market survey. And wanted to establish that we are number
one in Delhi.  Therefore this strategy. Shortly we will also
come out with a popular scheme to attract readers. That would
also increase our circulation." Shourie is brother of Arun
Shourie, former editor of Indian Express and now a member of the
Rajya Sabha. END.
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