Hindustan Times takes on The Tribune in Punjab with local content

Introduces local content for five cities across Punjab

The English daily Hindustan Times has introduced dedicated local pages for five locations in Punjab, including Patiala, Bhatinda, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Ludhiana.

Following this, the paper, which currently reaches out to the readers of these five cities with a replica of the Chandigarh edition, will have content tailored to the needs of the local populations of the five cities, apart from dedicated HT City for each location.

The daily, till now, had only one edition from Chandigarh reaching out to all these locations. The group has spent Rs 11 crore in upgrading machinery in Chandigarh and has installed a printing facility at Jalandhar to reach these five cities. The five editions will be printed from either the Chandigarh or the Jalandhar printing facilities of the group. Each edition has a print run of 20,000 copies.

As a part of this new arrangement, HT will have one or two dedicated pages and a four page lifestyle supplement, HT City, from each location. Till now, the five centres received only the national supplements of Hindustan Times such as Shine, HT Estate and Horizon.

Talking about the step, Vivek Gaur, business head, North and East, HT Media, says, "Punjab is a big market for us. Though we are strong in Chandigarh, somehow we got left behind The Tribune in the rest of Punjab. So, with this attempt, we aim to push up our circulation in the region. We are aiming a circulation which is 15-20 per cent higher than that of The Tribune."

Gaur says that the company gets an overall revenue of Rs 75 crore from the state of Punjab and following this development, the group hopes to achieve "much better revenues in the future from the state".

In Ludhiana, the daily, apart from HT City, will also come out with a four page news supplement titled Ludhiana Live, which will carry hard news stories of the city.