The Fine Print

New trends in government advertising spend in print media

30 November 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY SUKRUTI ANAH STANELEY
ILLUSTRATION BY SUKRUTI ANAH STANELEY

IN THE DECEMBER 2014 ISSUE of The Caravan, we took a deep dive into two repositories of data that capture different dimensions of the media landscape. The first was the Department of Advertising and Visual Publicity, which oversees the central government’s advertising spend—and has since been renamed the Bureau of Outreach and Communication. The second data repository was the ministry of corporate affairs, which stores information filed by companies for compliance purposes.

Six years later, we revisited both to see how the needle has moved on some of the media practices outlined last time. In this time period, the country has faced severe economic challenges, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a considerable shift in the ideological moorings of the media ecosystem. The rise of the news channel Republic TV, known for its propagandist content, is a case in point. We were interested to see how print businesses were faring against this backdrop.

The BOC data shows the central government’s spending on print advertising has declined significantly in the last two years. Yet, the government’s tendency to use this spending as a political lever persists. And even though the Modi administration has been allocating more spending on Hindi and other vernacular newspapers, the overall spending still skews towards urban, English-speaking audiences.

Howindialives.com is a Delhi-based startup that is developing a search engine to make public data more accessible to decision-makers.

Keywords: DAVP MCA newspapers government advertising spend Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL) Indian Express The Hindu HT Media Dainik Jagaran Dainik Bhaskar
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