The newspaper and magazine launches that we have been writing about this year continue unabated. Joint ventures and licensing  of titles from international publishers are daily coming to the newsstands and local publishers are also talking to each to start joint publications. The trend of local acquisitions is also gaining ground although thus far it is mainly Bennett Coleman that is acquiring or investing in regional dailies. After buying Vijay Karanataka group earlier in the year, Bennett Coleman has purchased 14 per cent equity in the Gujarati daily Sandesh.

Bennett Coleman has also formed a 50:50 joint venture with HT Media for the launch of a compact afternoon daily. Although the title of the new paper is not yet announced, both HT Media vice-chairperson Shobhana Bhartia and Bennett Coleman's managing director, Vineet Jain have spoken about jointly delivering a high quality paper. However, the real reason for the joint venture seems to be ward off competition from other groups such as Living Media, DNA and Mid-Day.

Sameer Kapoor, ex-managing director, Scholastic India, is expected to be the CEO of the joint venture. Ravi Dhariwal an executive director of Bennett Coleman has been quoted in the financial press as saying that the new tabloid is likely to catch the new year. It is likely that it will be printed at HT Media's Sector 63 plant in Noida, on Manugraph Cityline presses. Hitherto most Indian tabloids have been based on 27.5-inch (70 cm) reels and printed on 546 cut-off presses with a page size of 273 x 349 mm.

Berliner format?

Most Indian broadsheet dailies have brought down their page size in the last three years to 349 x 546 mm. Even the last holdout, The Hindu has now started using 27.5 and 55-inch (70 and 140 cm) reels in most centres. With the commissioning of its plant in MM Nagar, using new Mitsubishi Sprint 4 x 1 presses the Hindu's Chennai edition will also comply with the slimmer "national" standard.

Mid-Day, Mumbai's dominant tabloid launched its Bangalore edition in May and is also expected to start a Delhi edition soon. Living Media, publishers of the tabloid afternoon daily Today, were initially expected to start a new daily in the in-between Berliner format. However there is news that the new morninger will initially be printed by a Hindi newspaper publisher on a new Manugraph 6-tower press capable of full colour on either 24 broadsheet or 48 tabloid pages.

HT Media's new financial daily with a content agreement with Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal, is also looking at the Berliner format. This is an in-between format (330 x 470 mm) that has become very popular in Europe with the Guardian, Independent, and the Times of London shifting to it in the past year. It is likely that a 660-mm cut-off press will be imported by HT Media for the new financial daily in the Berliner format.

Eidos Méthode for HT Media

Although HT Media was not as visible at the Ifra Expo as Bennett Coleman or the ABB group, it was announced in Amsterdam that the group has purchased a new Méthode editorial and publishing system from Milan based EidosMedia. Méthode is an XML driven multi-media publishing platform that should help HT Media with its new premium business daily in collaboration with the Wall Street Journal and the FM radio channel recently launched in partnership with Virgin.

"We will initially be adopting Méthode for the production of a new daily aimed at the business community which will be published in both print and Web editions," said Sharad Saxena, vice-president for operations. "But the move to Méthode is part of a long-term strategy for the group involving the extension of our portfolio across multiple business channels to meet the emerging needs of the news audience."

After the rollout of the new financial daily, HT Media will transfer the rest of its print and online production to an extended Méthode platform with more than a thousand users. The initial installation will create an integrated print-Web newsroom in New Delhi and a sub-newsroom in Mumbai on a single editorial and archive platform. Subsequently Méthode will be extended to the group's other media products.