Anant's Blog: Media owners, help yourselves...

I attended a few sessions of the India Today Woman Summit held at Mumbai last week.

The centrepiece of the event was the keynote address by Erin Brockovich (NOT Julia Roberts, I must add, as she herself did).

Other highlights included an Award for women achievers, and panel discussions which featured Vinita Bali, Madhabi Puri Buch, Farah Khan, Nicola Horlick, Sangeeta Talwar and Anisha Motwani.

Winners of the award included Karishma Kapoor, Saina Nehwal, Rohini Nilekani and adland’s very own Anuja Chauhan and Ashvini Yardi.

You can read all the details of the event here.

I read all the Mumbai papers on Saturday and Sunday. The only references to the event were photographs of Ms Kapoor. I might have missed a few, as I’m not too hot on the pull-outs, but I certainly wouldn’t have missed anything in the main papers.

Saw a few pix of Ms Kapoor – all the captions accompanying the pix referred to her being at a media event or words to such effect.

What would it have cost anyone to mention the India Today Woman Summit – there, I said it, it was easy.

There are considerable investments made by all the large media houses in event properties. Unfortunately, these events find mention only in the media owned by that particular house, immediately reducing the impact of the event concerned.

It is no great secret that media houses often collude and connive on decisions on cover prices and ad rate hikes.

Perhaps they should also collude and connive to promote each other’s properties. As long as there is a mutual agreement, all those who are party to the agreement stand to gain.

Perhaps it is also time to think about what readers and viewers might think. If I don’t read India Today and I don’t watch CNBC or CNN IBN, I might not even know that Erin Brockovich was in town. I might not know that Priya Dutt speaks brilliantly. I might never have heard of Tessie Thomas, who was named the India Today Woman of the Year. I might not have known that Ms Thomas played a large role in the development of the Agni missiles.

And as a reader and as a viewer, I might not be happy with the newspaper and TV channel that I have chosen to read or watch.

Sadly, in our little world, I might have missed out on JWT’s Anuja Chauhan and Colors’ Ashvini Yardi being recognized for excellence in their fields.

Chew on that, all of you who are responsible for policy at newspapers, news magazines and news TV channels.