It is quite common in any industry that one person’s weakness is another person’s strength.
The same is said to be happening in Telugu media industry, too, as is evident from the market fight between two prominent Telugu dailies – Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy.
According to the talk going on in journalists’ circles, Andhra Jyothy is trying to cash in on the crisis in Eenadu on account of Coronavirus pandemic.
During the lockdown period in the initial months of Covid-19, many newspapers faced a very major crisis situation.
While most of the small and medium newspapers had to stop their publications, major newspapers had been forced to cut down their printing and circulation.
Even after the lifting of lockdown, these papers have not resumed the printing of newspapers on a large scale as was the situation during the pre-Corona days.
Even leading newspaper like Eenadu had to face a lot of problems due to drastic fall in advertisement revenue and shortage of newsprint.
So, it was forced to use newsprint sparingly by reducing the number of pages and also bringing down the overhead expenses.
As the advertisement revenue started dwindling, the gap between expenditure and revenue has increased drastically leading to losses.
In order to overcome the losses on account of transport and vendor commission, Eenadu management stopped sending the newspaper to the areas where the circulation is low – say 20-30 copies.
It has also stopped delivering newspapers to the readers who are not able to pay monthly bills. This is now being cashed in on by Andhra Jyothy, which is adopting a liberal attitude in circulation.
According to sources, Andhra Jyothy management has identified the areas where Eenadu stopped delivering newspapers. It has started circulating Andhra Jyothy in those areas.
Even to tough customers who are not paying monthly bills, Andhra Jyothy is being delivered, ignoring the losses.
Though it might appear that the market of Eenadu being captured by Andhra Jyothy is very small for now, but in future, it might turn out to be a big trouble for Eenadu.
Most of the readers of Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy are generally pro-Telugu Desam Party and if they start liking the hard-hitting journalism of Andhra Jyothy, they might permanently shift to this newspaper, dumping Eenadu which adopts a conservative approach.
So, Coronavirus effect has created market rivalries even in the media!