Times came up with this tabloid ........MUMBAI MIRROR .............. termed the concept of small paper , compact size and handiness as New Idea. whose time has come ..
Sorry to Say .......... Its a old idea .......... A tabloid with such idea is already in the market leading the segment years ago -------- MID-DAY... They also gunned TOI next day the MM was launched on their back page .
Thats the first wrong move ......... It messed up one P of Marketing .. POSITIONING ............... From what I think they could have either supplied this paper free along with Times of India ( to customers who are subscribed to that paper ) -- and taking the feedback after that from those people ..... diversified across mumbai .....within a bound time frame .............Rather than wat these DNA and Mumbai Mirror people does ( Wasting ours and theirs time by putting long list of Questionairre ).........Pheww.. it was a tiresome exercise .
Now on MM - --- I guess the paper is made to be a TABLOID ---------------- which means newspaper providing breaking news in condensed form, with illustrated, entertaining, and often sensational and scandalous material.
Now it does that correctly in terms of size and stuff ........... but I guess it lacked a certain zing which MID-DAY has ............... I am bound to compare to these two products as Accordingly MID-DAY also qualifies as a Tabloid ..........
The Entertaining part like .. ... which TV star leaving the show .......... which dress sold for 1 lakh ... romance of who’s who ...............to local newspaper covered comprehensively ............ seems to be missing in early days ......
But its too early too comment if the fate of this newspaper is gonna change or not but for sure Times People wont be sleeping easy till they increase the readership.....
What they need --
They need to cover the local more comprehensively ...
Pull out some new good new from the entertainment world ...
Some good columnists, ...which thy will easily get due to the father figure of TOI
cover the lifestyles of Big Shots
No Page 3 coverage here
Ofcousre some prizes
Paper had a good feel but lacked a punch to deliver the opponent knock Out ...
They also lack a bit of Masala-bazi which TOI still had , even being paper of National interest ....... MM can use CTRL C and CTRL V to do that .................
This Readership fight is soon gonna increase between the MD and MM ....... looking to encroach each others pie .................. The times coming for TOI is more worsened as they had their competitor also comin up with name as DNA ........
Well till then wait n watch as things getting hott in Print Media .......... But I still wonder Why the hell times need to come with a newspaper as TOI itself had the characteristics to be qualified as TABLOID ........ It successfully qualifies everywhre but SIZE .......... that way SIZE DOES MATTER
From
Avid TOI FAN --- Sandy
Comments appreciated : Please do rate as I had just started to write in MS