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Delhi Metro NRS 03 results

Delhi Metro NRS 03 results Average Issue Readership in 000s The Times Of India 1432 Navbharat Times 1431 Hindustan Times 1327 Punjab Kesari 1119 Hindustan 894 Grihshobha 612 Dainik Jagran 552 Meri Saheli 346 India Today - Eng 340 India Today - Hindi 310

NRS results...

The NRS results are out. The Times of India featres as the only English paper in the top 10 daily newspapers in the country. Coverage on Mediaah Exchange4media There has been a lot of litigation on the release of the NRS.

The Virtual world is not virtual any more...

This is a really significant precedent. First there was the intersection of commerce on the edge, with scores of E:Bay auctions selling stuff in the make beleive worlds, then it was legitimised, with the game companies selling the stuff themselves. And now a judge in the real world rules on property in a vistual world. The intersection of the virtual and real worlds is complete http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=4022155 Online Gamer in China Sues, Wins Over Virtual Theft Fri December 19, 2003 08:30 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has ordered an online video game company to return hard-won virtual property, including a make-believe stockpile of bio-chemical weapons, to a player whose game account was looted by a hacker.

Not so fast

I thought this was a brilliant idea. Apparently the Google bar doesn't have the IE Control+Enter shortcut, and it trips up on urls like http://bloglines.com/myblogs, or part urls like download.com, which are handled by the address bar. So if someone at google fixes this, then one can be rid of the address bar and save some screen height in the Web Browser...

Bye Bye address bar, welcome Google Bar

In search of more browser screen space, I was trying to minimise the space consumed by the toolbars, when it struck me to replace the address bar with the google bar... like so

God Considers Smiting Bible Pirates

Smite on... God Considers Smiting Bible Pirates Vatican City - God did not rule out smiting as a final measure against those who share his most famous work, the Bible, on the Internet. This marks the first time a deity has spoken on IT-related questions since Steve Jobs was temporarily Enlightened when touching the One True iMac some years ago. Authorized Version? Citing misuse of His word, misquotation, and putting hardworking Bible printers out of work, God said he would now start hunting Bible pirating around the globe. 'I have to defend both my world-famous brand - the Bible and its distinctive likenesses - and the livelihood of those who create and distribute legal copies of it. Sure, they live not by bread alone, but website hits - someone else's website mind you - don't pay the bills for these folks.' Since large portions of the Bible are many centuries old, many people believe the work to be in the public domain. Not so, said God. 'Look, most cop...

The Blog is dead.. Long live the blog...

I've finally renamed the blog today... It is now no longer called "A Blog Formerly known as My Ramblings and Rants", instead it is now called Marlinspike . This is a sailors needle and can most simply explained as Knot Untangler. Though it is aso used to tie knots :D. Why Marlinspike? Read on ...

What is a Marlinspike?

Marlinspike is a knot untangler... it is used by sailors to... Untangle Knots and also to tie them.

Of ego surfing and rebranding...

Decided to go ego surfing today. The term Chirag throws back this blog as the number 5 result. Not bad considering a few months ago I wouldn't even feature in the top ten. A search for Chirag Patnaik now throws back this blog as the first one... Earlier it used to throw back one of the sites I'd done. I also decided to have a look at who was linking to me... Pitifully few of course. And all of them from Comments I made somewhere or as part of some blog directory. I found Recently Updated Indian Weblogs He lists my Blog as... Chirag This is of course because of the long and unwieldy name of my blog. I'd realised this earlier of course. This just proves that I have to rebrand the blog.

poor loser strikes again...

As much as I dislike indulging in a flame war, but this poor loser seems to have a fan following... Further the poor loser claims I admire and respect people who can argue logically, without getting petty or personal. I also admire people who can admit defeat graciously when they lose an argument fair and square. I admire people who hear out other arguments before stating their own, instead of blindly sticking to a stand. I hope to be such a person myself. HAH! He doesn't like the fact he can be google bombed too :D In retrospect, the term poor loser seems to have been very apt since he is most definitely a poor loser . Okay Okay, I'm repeating myself...

Branding

I'm considering a change of name... Not my name.. the name of this blog... Why? It's a long story... It goes back to my training as a marketeer... The Name "A Blog Formerly Known as My Ramblings and Rants" is far too long and from a branding perspectiv too complicated for anyone to refer. Not that anyone is refering to me... But, if someone were to refer to me, then that would be a real problem... A Branding nightmare... In fact I can hardly think of any popular blog which has such a long name. So one needs a snappy one or two words for the blog...

Poor Loser

I commented on an item on this poor loser 's blog: How juvenile... It's like spitting on a Mercedees Benz whizzing by, while sitting in a bus... To figure out the context visit this Poor Loser 's Blog

MidDay Stocks

This is a curious article on Mid-Day. It talks of a meteoric rise of the MiDay Stock in response to speculative trading. This is all the more curoius because other media stocks are flat. Of Course rumours of buyout of MidDay means that speculators are at play. and some talk of my company as being one of the suitors. That seems to be unlikely as there is some internal movement my company launching an Afternoon paper in Mumbai.

Cry Baby...

Roland Piquepaille in Can You Pay U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries? While cMarket has solved its immediate challenge, the implications of Jon's approach are potentially mind-bending. What if other companies begin taking the same approach -- offering Indian-style wages to American workers? On the positive side, we could begin to solve our job-creation problems. But on the negative side, America's standard of living would inevitably decline. There's only one way to find out for sure how it all might shake out, and that is for other executives to replicate Jon's experiment. The results could be quite interesting. What is irritating about this is that America waves the flag of globalisation and when globalisation hits it, it goes screaming like a baby... This is similar to the Visa regimes instituted by the West post World War II, trying to stop the influx of immigrants to maintain a better standard of living. When people world over figured that manufactur...

Gigapixel Images

This image is part of a Gigapixel Image

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

Last night I started reading For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast... It traces the history of Coca-Cola from the early days of being a patent (quack) medicine as a rip off by pemberton, of something that was then sold as Vin Marini... the buying out my Asa candler, the early blanket marketing by Robinson... The rumours of Cocaine content, and the subsequent removal fo Cocaine from the formula. Earlly advertising, the journey from being a medicine, to a Cocaine laced soft drink to a Simply refreshing Cold Drink. The book reads like a thriller. I've reached a point where Robert Woodruff has just taken over the company...

Guardian launches digital edition

This edition still in Beta, presents the daily paper online, not in classic internet format, but regular broadsheet format. With one being able to click and read the section one desires. This is similar to the Orange Country Register Digitl version. Though one is not privy to the software being used, but the underlying technology, navigation and presentation clearly points to Olive Software, which has also powered the Orange County Register digital edition. http://digital.guardian.co.uk/
Scoble Comments Last night in the airport I was reading a copy of Fast Company magazine. It's really weird to see quotes from webloggers in the pages of magazines. Joi Ito had a quote featured there. In Wired, the smiling faces of Ben and Mena Trott stared out of the pages at me. It's a strange world we've all entered. Three years ago I barely knew what a blog was.

EVD or DVD

Wired reports Move Over DVD, Here Comes the EVD . Analysts qouted in the story say that the evd will not suceed, considering that hollywood studios may not support the same... I think otherwise, The Asian markets are still new to DVD's and Asian producers may switch to this. Also like most consumer electronics, DVD/EVD players will be manufactured in Asia (China, Taiwan et al). They just might suppport it...
This is neat. You can link to the middle of a realmedia stream... Presidential debate has been discussed, but I can use it as a marker in between a movie... Read more via [Boing Boing Blog]
Some more links of AdAsia Coverage The Times of India Advertising industry enters a new era Advertising industry enters a new era The Economic Times Ad Asia ends with kudos to creativity of Asians AgencyFaqs Santosh Desai lambasts marketers for their narrow view of society ‘Don’t emulate western ideas,’ is the creative consensus Money is compensation for not living your life the way you want to: Charles Handy Are marketers missing the grey boom, asks expert on ageing Don’t break the wrong rules: Jack Trout Financial Express Curtains On Grand Advertising Meet Advertising Highs: Lessons From Jaipur Reflections From Thought Leaders
Om Mallik comments... This was the whole point I was making, that technology is no longer something you can talk about when you are marketing a product when I posted this According to the Chinese Ministry of Information, world # 1 and #2 wireless handset makers are not doing that well in China. From January to September 2003, Chinese makers produced 129 million handsets. Ningbo held the top spot at 15%. Motorola slips to #2 at 14%, followed closely by TCL at 12%. Rounding out the top four, Nokia held a 10% share. Wanna bet that next year one of these two chinese handset makers will be selling phones in US for $50 a pop - and they will include camera, some bluetooth and good knows what. [GigaOm]
Boing Boing Blog comments on VoIP an dall the chaos surrounding the VoIP providers.. The fun will start when some does VoIP over WiFi. While this is new as a commercial service, the technology is not really new... Dial Pad, Buddy Phone et al. from 4 odd years back... and not to forget corporate WAN's. my company, The Times has been using it fo quite some time...

Skype

One of the things the blogosphere is talking about Skype . Skype is peer to Peer voice application on the web... From the Skype webite What is Skype Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users – not to share files this time, but to talk and chat with your friends. The technology is extremely advanced - but super simple to use... You’ll be making free phone calls to your friends in no time! Features Free unlimited worldwide phone calls to other Skype users Superior sound quality - better than your regular phone Works with all firewall, NAT and routers – nothing to configure! Friends list shows you when your Skype friends are online and ready to talk or chat Super-simple and easy to use Your calls are encrypted “end-to-end” for superior privacy Telcos beware

Nokia 3108

New Pen-Based Nokia 3108 phone ... Finally is all I can say. The competitors like Sony Ericsson and Treo are already into their second (P-900) or third (Treo 600) editions of their Stylus phones.

OS is no longer a differentiator for Nokia

As a member of the Nokia planning team, I was party to the market Insight, that the device is becoming secondary to the whole process of communication... While this is worrying to Nokia Nokia is itself digging it's own grave... How? For years, Nokia phones were known for their simplicity and ease of use, and admittedly by the top execs of hte company that the proprietary interface on their hones had a lot to do with it... Howver the newer Nokias are using the Symbian Series 60 based OS. Which means that the interface is no longer the key distinguishing factor between the different brands of phones. This coupled with the earlier insight would mean an ever weaking technological position which has been Nokia's marketing pitch in the past. The oft repeated statement in any marketing course as to Technology no longer being a differentiator, but a leveller, will be true for Nokia. This Wired story on cracking of the Nokia N-Gage Games to be run on other Series 60 OS phones (Siemens)...

Some More coverage on AdAsia

Some more coverage of the AdAsia conference in Jaipur... The Economic Times microsite on AdAsia The Times of India India's moment has arrived : Ambani Exchange4Media microsite on AdAsia Indian Express Batey Bets On Top Ten Global Indian Brands Brand India Business Standard Ambani, Kumar Birla pitch for Brand India

AdAsia on the Web

My Boss and other bigwigs fron the The Times are away at the AdAsia conference at Jaipur... A poor substitute to being there is to read about it... So read on... The Economic Times microsite on AdAsia The Times of India Ad Asia mantra: Break rules to break even Ad industry maturing in Pak Business Standard Admen salute consumer, the king Asian admen get royal welcome agencyfaqs.com Brand India will succeed: Mukesh Ambani Great brands play the role of protagonists: Scott Bedbury Cult Branding: The Harley Davidson experience Over time media will become more targetable: Irwin Gotlieb "Advertisers have lost focus of the key purpose of advertising" – Sergio Zyman I have never broken any rules; perhaps none of us have: Amitabh Bachchan Product variety is not the same as experience variety: CK Prahalad Engaging the consumer of tomorrow: MS Banga "Industry-wide emulation" is the problem, says Ricardo Semler Anticipation unbound The Telegraph Salary fixing is based on basi...

It's not what you know, but who you know

Ross Mayfield Comments on Many to Many: The rise of social networking gives greater credence to the saying "It's not what you know, but who you know." This inherently undemocratic notion concerns some, and, indeed, the Network is the Market. Within a power-law distribution, preferential attachment implies... Full Article
Some Newspaper Blogs that I cam across, there are many more ofcourse http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog/ http://www.journaltimes.com/weblogs/

Ridding oneself of the electronic leash...

Should you turn of your cellphone or remove the battery if you don't want to be contacted? This comment on Smart Mobs says that mobile phones can be tracked even when they are turned off... I found this worrying and somewhat unbelievable... till one reads the comments... Where someone comments that a signal is sent out by the phone, when it is being turned off... This gyan explains the different operator messages one gets when one removes the phone battery without turning the phone off... vs. just turning the phone off...
Reading Why Indian media is so self obsessive , makes me wonder whether Om Maliks definition of a blog, is to be news and anaysis and can't be on the lighter side of things... Also read the comment that I left attached to the post... PM have you read this...

Cell Number Mobility

NYT reports that from next month, subscribers will be able to switch services without having to change numbers... One wonders when this will happen in India, I'm just about sick of the service and am going to switch. Number moblity would be so cool...

Making of a Saint

No Comment on the life and works and other controversies surrounding the Mother, just rah rah on the beatification... read the Wiki on The Mother , if you have more time read the book Final VerDict . The full text is available online without pictures... The Book looks at the other side of the personality

The Death of Email...

There is some talk in the blogosphere on the death of email, saving email, rss replacing email, new email projects like Internet Mail 2000 ... what I'm trying to do here is to piece together the various points of views and solutions.. The premise: E-mail is dying. Why? because of the amounts of spam flowing into peoples mail boxes and the attack of viruses like SoBig. We will explore what Michael Fraase has to say now and then . At some point one will begin to wonder whether RSS will kill "email" or "email publishing" ... huge difference between the two. When one figures this out, one will realise that there are people on the other side of the debate too. i.e. feel email will live and of course someone countered this as well and a response to that and of course there will be people like me who will be bystanders attempting to make sense in the chaos that exists

Diwali

The Festival of Lights This is one of the oldest Hindu festivals occuring in the month of Kartik, which commemorates the return of Rama to Ayodhya after an exile of 14 years. It also marks the beginning of the new year and is celebrated with the lighting of lamps. Diwali or Deepawali, literally 'an array of lamps', is the festival of lights and is celebrated on the darkest night of Kartik. It is perhaps the most important festival in India. Originally a Hindu festival, it has now crossed the bounds of religion and is celebrated by all in India with fervor and gaiety. This day is a public holiday all over India. Twinkling oil lamps or diyas light up every home and firework displays are common all across the country. The goddess Lakshmi (consort of Vishnu), who is the symbol of wealth and prosperity, is also worshipped on this day. This festive occasion also marks the beginning of the Hindu new year and Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, the symbol of auspiciousness and w...

Google Compute

I have been running Google Compute for some weeks now... It is a distributed computing project like SETI@Home . SETI@Home is itself going to migrate into an open distributed computin platform which is due to start soon
One of the advantages of working with a newspaper is that you meet all sorts of people, techies, editors, business people, Lawyers. A few things that I have been talking to people about recently in the company Preseidential Blogs Death of Email / Email Vs RSS Marketing the 3650 by blogs Social Sofware Comment Spam If I find the time to follow the incredible number of cross links and discussion threads expect more on these...

It is not A Yahoo Group... it is the whole thing

All Media reporting seems to concentrating on the fact that a single yahoo group has been banned. but the fact of the matter is. It is the entire Yahoo Groups sub-domain groups.yahoo.com that has been banned... The ultimate irony is tht everyone know knows of this yahoo group... and atleast worldwide (if not india) people can read what the dissidents have to say... and this censorship has made them more famous, rather than consign them oblivion which was the intention... The IT ACT 2000 says it allos for balanced flow of information ... which is bullshit. It is censorship plain and simple. What is most pissing is that hey don't even know how to do it properly.

Google News Alerts

I was looking for coverage of the blocking of Yahoo Groups by the Indian Government and I stumbled onto Google News Alerts .. Neat... I can already see possibilities here... I can set an alert for "Chirag Patnaik" be the first to know when I get famous...

oh to bypass the censorship by the Govt...

This is the first major censorship attempt by the Govenment of India. My alumni group runs on yahoogroups... I'm really really pissed. Apart from anonymizer.com , there is Guardster.com , the-cloak.com and the dmoz/google directory of free anonymising proxies... this is al very fine.. but I can't login to see the mesages on the group... The Cloak is supposed to allow it, but it doesn't seem to work... suggestions welcome

$200 BIll

Whatever will they think of next??
Dgital Blasphemy has some neat computer generated pics...

To tell the truth...

[Gizmodo] AgileMobile says it has a new software application for cellphones that can detect when the person you're talking to on the phone is lying. Supposedly it can measure the stress that shows up when someone is being less than truthful. We're sure it works perfectly.
Incase you thought Diamonds were expensive... Check this piece out in Wired on The New Diamond Age . Diamonds are cheap it says... $5 a karat to be exact... :D... Not to mention DeBeers is not amused...
[Wired] Toyota plans to release a car that parks itself. Automotive journalists test-drove it and say it works like a charm. I Want One

PowerPoint Is Evil?

I have been looking for Edward Tufte's Book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information . He keeps on Raving and Ranting about Powerpoint... So much so wired did a piece on this...

Business Opportunity?

Hey this is yet another oppurtunity for India... to set up back end data warehousing and backup operations.. far far away from your site of operations... New York Times : Many companies that had their own disaster recovery plans found on Aug. 14 that their backup site was within the blackout area.
Wired report , The Internet still functions after Saturday midnight -- so far. The Blaster worm failed to bring down a Microsoft's site and network, and cause other mischief as planned. Microsoft says 'no problem,' but warns individual computers remain vulnerable if not patched. When my comp was having fits last monday I was wondering what the hell was happening... It was this blaster worm of course, fortunately for me I had another OS installed, I got on to the web, downloaded the patch and was back up and running in no time flat :D.

Audio...

Suddenly and quite of the blue I'm on this audiophile kick... I have this unexplainable urge to buy a Home theatre system, DVD/CD 5.1 Surround et al... Onkyo is uspposedly good... so is Bose, but that is very expensive. Research, research adn research.

Content Management

Though Technology is supposed to be a business driver, sometimes it seems technology is adopted for the sake of technology rather than for achieving something concrete. In my previous company (a publishing house, which generates pages and pages of content everyday) , whenever one spoke of content management , the discussion usually involved tech professionals, on what to use how to use. Very rarely would a discussion be around as to how does it help business This piece looks at it from a managerial perspective, as a business driver.

The pretty girl and the old woman...

Robert Heinlein "An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to se the pretty girl she used to be, more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart."

I'm famous...

The Times of India Delhi Today published a screen shot that I gave them of Google going Local (i.e. India edition). If you look closely at the Google screenshot on the business page (free registration required), in the taskbar there is one tab which says Chirag... That's ME ...

First it was Black, now it is blue...

My bike after extensive repairs... all the body panels were changed from black to blue.

A week of biking

It's been a week since I started driving a bike again... I don't think I can get the bike to scream down the streets of Delhi at 100+ Kph for a few months to come :( The Bike is now blue (Pics tomorrow), it was black before. Black is not lucky (auspicious?) for me (or so an astrologer told my parents)

dilli shehar ke rehne walon main aa raha hoon

Friends, Pakistanis and Wellwishers, lend me your ears. (actually eyeballs) :). After weeks of what can only be termed as medieval torture i.e. pricks, boiling water, melted wax, electrocution, fingers bent thisway and that, I've recovered to a state which can be termed as normal as far as civilised humans go. I was finally able ride a bike (Yes the very same one, that was smashed in my unfortunate close acquaintance with a truck on the picturesque route to Mussorie) as of yesterday. It was limited to a an agonisingly short 10 minutes, but till more strength returns that will have to do. Physiotherapy will continue for the next few months, but if all goes well, I should be back in Delhi on the first of August and rejoin on the 2nd. Of course I have to hunt for a physiotherapist that suits my timings, but that is a small matter... Before you say that should be the last joyride across the country, I'm thinking of driving back to Delhi on the bike... still have to convince a few p...

The Internet as I see it...

Some months ago, when I was with BCCL, (the publisher of The Times of India and he Economic Times), I had a conversation with CTO of the group Internet company, Times Internet Limited. Who asked me to put down some thoughts on how I see things on the internet shaping up. While I did put down those thoughts, I never actually sent it to him, the file was lying around till I came across it a couple of days back. Here is a rewrite of what I initially penned down (typed up?). A lot of rambling about nothing in particular. The positioning of a product or service is more and more targeted to more and more specific audiences? Case in point are the BMW and Mercedes, both are from fine German engineering pedigree, both are premium luxury cars. However the buyers of the two will probably as different as two people can be. The former will be bought by a person who will drive the car himself and the latter probably by someone who has a chauffer (Yes, I know Mercedes also makes sports cars… ...
had an accident last night... totalled one side of my scooter... and got hit on the knee real bad... I think I'm out of comission for the next few days...
two of my batchmates have founded an agency called... "Late Nights and Crazy Weekends". True agency wallahs both of them. Best of luck to them... if you want to give them some biz... call Rohan @ 9811649393
BTW, Martin Sorrell bought over a sister (our host) agency Bates. Which means our host will probably cease to exist ina few months time... which makes me wonder as to what happens to my agency? 25% of which is now owned by WPP, and the rest is owned by WPP's arch (and bigger) rival Publicis... the word that comes to mind is B...... :| that the agency parentages are somewhat complicated is an understatement...
I now have to check all the billing figures over the past 4 months to see how much more money is left for spending on TV... boring is not even beginning to say it...
I'm pretty pleased with myself... I learnt how to make a channel recommendation all by myself... and all in one night... :D
Monsoon seems to have finally hit delhi... to celebrate I drove through driving rain (on my scooter) from home to office (about 10Km's)...
Have been doing some work on cellular service providers in the country (India), Click here to have a look at the various brands available in the various circles... More stuff coming up on this...

I could have been Newton...

It is said that if Newton had not discovered the principles of Gravity, somebody else surely would have. This has been proved time and again, Ramanujam reputedly singlehandedly calculated all the mathematical principles that the world had done in the for the past 100 years or so, because nobody told him that someone had already done so... Why am I talking about this? I thought it might be neat idea to use WiFi as a third standard for 3rd gen mobile telephony (apart from GSM, CDMA), by piggybacking VoIP on WiFi. simpe isn't it. It turns out that half the world is already working on it... Not only working on it but a search for it tells that it is talking about it like crazy. And not only working on it & talking about it, but also taking steps to counter/co-opt it, as last month's (sorry can't lcoate it online) issue of wired reports...
Dettol is not an antiseptic soap... gosh!! I would have never known... I remember my branding prof back in college saying "Dettol means *protection*"... Hee Hee :D
I'm a marketeers delight, I'm also on the market for an mp3 player, this SlimX 550 is one of the ones that made the shortlist. A review of the same. More models that were considered... SlimX 400 , SlimX 350 Though I'm tending towards a Hard Drive Player...
So you thought economics was a nutty subject... In What's the difference between working for money and playing for money? Kottke comments on virtual economies interacting with the one in the real world...
More on CAS Chaos, this time the research focuses on consumers rather than the commercial interests. It's a research report, so one can't comment, but one guesses that far more people will go in for the boxes than the research suggests, even at the higher prices mentioned. TV is too much of a basic necessity for families to ignore. What will they do in spare time? go and take a walk in the park or hit the football field, like the old days? not bloody likely.
Found this awesome piece of code here . which allows you to convert any summary sheet/table into a database list!!! cool... eases work so much. aahhh... There is a slight error in the code, but if you are familiar with Excel VBA, you should be able to fix it in a snap... :)
Nice quote for the day... "There's a warder who's fond of me. I don't ask why, I've learnt to take what's there without questioning the source. When he sees me on all fours scrabbling at the earth in a random-looking way that is quite scientific, he gets upset and hurries over with the spade and offers to help me. Especially, he wants me to use the spade. He doesn't understand I want the freedom to make my own mistakes." ~from "The Passion", by Jeannette Winterson
Does advertising have variations across the year? was a question asked. Of course. and it varies differently for different categories. As a broad and general statement for print, advertising peaks in October, with an immediate fall in November. For the rest of the year it is more or less at a stable level, except for a slight dip in Feb, April and July. Of course there is also the fact that there will be individual variations for different categories... woollens, cars, computers for obvious reasons. Then there are special events like the world cup, which would bring about huge swells in spends. This last world cup showed a monitored swell of 50% on print... amazing is the only word I can think of
CAS (Conditional Access System) was supposed to be a boon for the viewer, with the promise of cheaper cable. Option of choosing only the pay channels one wants to watch. More accountability of the cable operator towards the braodcaster. Instead it has brought uncertainity... worst case being talked about is that the four cities just drop of the Satellite TV map of the country on July 14th (the date of implementation in the four metros). Bah! Thank God I never bought a TV... More on CAS from agencyfaqs.com
exchange4media reports that there might be a shift of ad revenues from TV to print due to CAS (Condional Access System)... Nonsense. I think (like the other Media Planners quoted in the story) nothing of the sort is going to happen. Silly to assume, that post CAS viewership and readership patterns will change... In fact if the promise of cheaper cable comes through. one might have more people opting for a cable connection.
My most favourite quote for today... In between goals there is something called life, which has to be lived and enjoyed... :)
Drew's Blog comments on something I've been looking for, for quite some time... He mentions Radio. I've heard of Radio... Expensive... sigh!
ETC Punjabi is throwing a party on their 3rd Anniversary today at The Ashok ... yay. I'm off straight to the party from Office...
Some people commented that this was a new thing and they had read about it in the magazines... Not True! Look up my archives , they date back to 2000. (I just kinda dropped out of the scene.) and there were people blogging years before I was...
For the people who are visiting this place and have no idea about what is a blog... here is a brief intro... A Blog is short for WebLog. It is nothing but a personal online journal. In my case as the description on the side says, it is "The Ramblings and Rants of somebody in particular about everything in general..." :). If you need pointers on how to get one for yourself, do drop me a mail...
My Favourite Quote for Today... "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better...to know even one life has breathes easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have to sit and enter the readership and circulation data for all the publications in India over the past 5 years... this is slowwww and painfull...