The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai marooned

The media did a fantastic job covering this great deluge. It focused attention on problem areas and made an administration that belched along as sluggishly as the Mithi River it had clogged up shake off its amazing inertia.

Anyone who was stuck in a car for 15 hours with sheets of rain for company is now a confirmed FM fan. The radio was the only link with sanity.

Communicating in the floods

Lack of power and flooded streets meant that the newspapers did not land up on Mumbaikars' doorsteps on 27-7. Television stole the limelight from print on those terrible days. People wondered why the administration never commandeered boats, which were lying unused all over Mumbai, and fishermen, who are unemployed in the monsoons and to whom 10 feet of water holds no fears to ferry marooned citizens out of flooded areas. After all, one boat did sail into Bandra East to rescue Shri Bal Thackeray.

One also wondered why helicopters were not used to drop food and water supplies. After all, NDTV got aerial shots of Mumbai on the day after.

Effective communication

The vivid images of those trying days:

Spokesperson for a failed administration: Mr. Deshmukh, Chief Minister. The poor gent spent hours explaining why nothing had been done.

Spokesperson for aviation in India: Mr Praful Patel. He spent many minutes explaining why the media was blowing the hapless plight of passengers out of all proportion. He forgot he had blown his fuse some time ago as he was not informed his Air India flight was an hour late.

Most articulate spokesperson for hapless air passengers: The NRI with a 14-month-old child on her hip on NDTV. Air India will not forget her in a hurry.

Born to the flood

DNA, the new daily newspaper from the Bhaskar-Zee stable was delivered on Saturday, July 30 amidst what could best be described as a trial by flood. Fifty pages of well laid out news and views awash with colour pictures on every page. With an initial start-up circulation (obviously not certified) of 3.5 lakh it would appear to be an impressive first month. But as we all know, it's all in the retention, baby. And that will be known only after a couple of months. Pradeep Guha, who played mid-wife to the birth of this newspaper, can now think of getting back to running a television company.

NRS 05 - the sequel

The National Readership survey 2005 is now complete. At a function held in midtown Mumbai, the NRSC and its market research agency released the psychographic data, the first-time data on supplements and the data on Kerala.

Malayala Manorama comes back on to the Top Ten list. The Mathew family can continue smiling.

It's now official. The Bombay Times is read by about 54 per cent of the readers of The Times of India. Mumbaikars can smile. A whole 46 per cent of the Times' readers don't care a hoot about the Page 3 types. And all those who pompously claimed that readers first read the Bombay Times before looking at the main issue may now kindly bite their collective tongues. The figures now conclusively prove that Page 3 of the main issue (city news) is more important to readers than Page 3 of the paid news.

Ravi Kant

The advertising community must be happy that Ravi Kant has been elevated to the post of Managing Director of Tata Motors. Kant was very much a part of the fraternity and was even Chairman of the NRSC. The media-shy Kant is known to be a man of few words and a quiet achiever. All the best, Ravi Kant.

You can't have enough of that kind.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Booking gains

Invert the selling pyramid

The customer is King. Sez who?

`We always look for more share of throat'

After the deluge

Test of taste

Mumbai marooned

Jo dikhta hai, wohi bikta hai