The New Age - you gupta hand it to them

Some newspapers, you see, are launched as some sort of family heirloom that survives in spite of not necessarily being profitable. All they need are deep pockets and ego.

Having said that, however, The New Age could just surprise the media industry and actually become economically viable.

Broadly supportive of Government

And the reason for this is that, for the first time, we are seeing a media owner who is quite open about launching a newspaper that will unashamedly support Government. While this is in complete contrast to the local newspaper industry's vociferous insistence that all their titles are fiercely independent, it is nothing new in global terms. The UK, Europe and indeed Asia, for example, have newspapers that proudly fly flags of overt political alignment.

As such, I guess that The New Age could be expecting quite a bit of advertising revenue from Government, which is one of the biggest advertisers in the country.

The Gupta family is influential, has extremely diversified business interests and is extremely proud of its reputation. They also have deep pockets and have persuaded other big investors, such as the Times of India, to put money into The New Age venture in SA.

The Guptas claim that The New Age will be independent but will be "broadly supportive" of the SA government." With the emphasis, they claim, being on "government" and not ANC. Now that is a very, very thin line.

Can't be profit driven, surely?

Clearly, the reason behind the establishment of a new daily newspaper in SA does not stem from any sort of profit ambition.

One just has to look at the health of daily newspapers the world over and the picture is bleak. Extremely bleak.

Here, in South Africa, there is not more than a handful of newspapers that even in good times actually make any money. And those that traditionally make money, such as the Sunday Times, are making a lot less money than they used to.

One could understand it if the Guptas had decided to get into the commercial community weekly market because that's a gold mine, as Caxton consistently proves.

But, daily newspapers are another story altogether. Even one of SA's most profitable and experienced media companies, Naspers, presented a wonderful set of accounts recently, with the only blot on its copy book being its newspaper division.

Not the best idea

Frankly, if someone asked me for my opinion on a good investment in SA, starting a daily newspaper would rank about 1500th on my list of 1500 suggestions.

Right up to the time ThisDay died, major media buyers in this country were saying that it was "not even on their radar" in terms of advertising. This was mainly because it simply could not generate enough readers to get media buyers interested, on top of which it had no money to market itself nor to provide for more than a tiny handful of ad sales reps.

It is going to be interesting to see whether The New Age will plow any significant money into marketing or whether it will put in place an ad sales team big enough to take on the hundreds of ads reps employed just, for example, by the SABC alone and all pitching for the same piece of pie.

Alternatively, it will go the Sunday Independent route and sustain itself through family pride.

You gupta hand it to them

I believe that the launch of The New Age is going to be absolutely fascinating. Especially from the point of view of seeing whether being broadly supportive of Government can swing some serious ad revenue its way.