@Swapnil_Marathe Nice point 1, regarding readership. As long as readership continues to stay around this level and doesn’t degrow, advertisements would come back. Advertisers would have to advertise if people are interested in reading a newspaper. In my view, the younger generation does not have much inclination towards newspapers. They are natively digital but people, relatively older and belonging from Tier-2, Tier-3 town, and rural, are still excited about newspapers and mainly interested in credible local news.
Probing it a bit deeper as you are closer to the industry. Why can not local advertisers (education, retail, or real state) go digital way? What is preventing this transition? If there are issues related to the adoption of the digital platform, How long it might take for the transition? Or there is something, which simply does not work in Digital and hence print would exist.
Another point that I think people are not at all considering is once digital platforms become mainstream. There might be huge consolidation in the news producers. Digital platforms work in this way, eliminating smaller inefficient players, and efficient players keep gaining more and more readers/subscribers. I am not sure what can be the monetization model, subscription fee, or ad, but the number of target customers for news producers would go up. Because there will not be any physical limits on distribution. Though Fb/Google might have a strong upper hand in the distribution of the news. I believe DB Corp and Jagran too are working on this line. To provide a world-class, ad-less experience so that later on they can charge a very small subscription fee and engaged active users don’t mind the fee. What do you think of this? Can this occur, where one or two dominant newspapers become strong digital players? and if this occurs how far is that future?