Mid-day

Will an afternoon newspaper succeed in Bangalore, as it has in Mumbai? I think it will be a toughie, though, there are possibilities either way. I picked up a copy recently and it brought about some nostalgia from my earlier Bombay days, but I haven't picked up a copy after that, primarily because it is not accessible and its been a while since I read a newspaper in the day after flipping through the morning one.

Here are my thoughts...

• Culture - the IT culture is a youth culture, so Mid-days irreverent reporting would help it pick up, but entry into the tech campuses, mostly wired and internet driven will be tough.
• Work environment - Mumbai has a significant set of industries that after the early morning hyperactivity cool off at noon (financial sector). Here, that doesnt exist. Here you are either slogging or totally at leisure - I exaggerate, but am pretty close there.
  
• Coffee houses, colleges - surely drivers and they exist in ample numbers here
  
• Public transport with enough room - Pretty bad in Bangalore, so that would be tough, but private transport networks of companies can be a good idea if Mid-day can get a distribution channel opened through them. Crosswords, Sudoku are popular here and given the traffic, have a lot of potential.
  
• Enough point of sale places - Unlike Bombay, except for traffic signals (and traffic jams) much of the other intrastructure is absent or has to be created differently in Bangalore. No railway stations or a thousand paper shops, so newspapers will have to create kiosks.

Clearly, there is an audience, but, how to reach them is the moot question, since very few people if any, take delivery of the noon newspaper at home. In any case it is not so much of an afternoon newspaper as much as it as evening newspaper, but we will know...