Dow Jones May Tie Up With Pti To Take On Reuters

In a bid to face up to competition, specially from Reuters, Dow Jones and Company Inc, the international media major, is exploring the possibility of expanding its reach in the domestic media market for various financial services with the help of Press Trust of India.

Exploratory talks on the possibilities of various Dow Jones financial services to be distributed by PTI in the country has been undertaken by both the media houses. PTI last year reached an agreement for circulating the Dow Jones commodity service.

Contacted by Business Standard, PTI general manager M K Razdan did not confirm or deny the move.

 

He said, "These are proposals and ideas which have not concretised yet."

Dow Jones, which has various services like the Dow Jones South Asia Report, DJ Energy Service and DJ Asian Equity Report, has to go through PTI because of government regulations which stipulate that foreign wire services cannot sell directly to domestic media houses.

Though the general news service of Reuters is distributed by PTI, Razdan pointed out that Reuters distributes its business news (mostly screen-based) independently.

Currently, PTI picks up Dow Jones news of its choice from a screen installed at its Delhi head office for further distribution. "In various part of the world, we work through third party vendors like PTI.... we hope PTI will help us to sell to more customers," said Dow Jones' managing editor (South Asia) Edward Lane.

Both Razdan and Lane, however, refused to discuss the revenue sharing and other financial details of last year's agreement for the commodity service.

"We propose to sell the DJ markets service, which is screen-based, more aggressively in the Indian market keeping within the ambit of the law," Lane explained.

Peter R Kann, who has been chairman and CEO of Dow Jones & Company Inc since 1991 and editorial director of Dow Jones' publications since 1989, had admitted to Business Standard last year in an interview that Dow Jones was number two to Reuters, specially in the US

Kann had said, "To compete more successfully we need to invest an additional $ 650 million in the next three to four years in a whole range of areas from new technologies, to interactive internet and expanded content of real time info, some new businesses like transactional systems and user-friendly interfaces."

Media sources said Dow Jones has seized this opportunity to expand the scope of business in India as PTI too is undergoing a facelift, specially in its business news services, and is believed to be spending about Rs 10 crore on its modernisation plans.

PTI is also attempting to revamp the format of its agriculture news service, reports meant for foreign missions, the magazine service where business news features are put out and stock and commodity reports. It plans to bring them all under the one umbrella.

"It is here that Dow Jones is lending a helping hand by extending informal technical assistance and other know-how to set up a modern and user-friendly network," industry sources said.