IPL slaps more restrictions on TV channels

Lalit Modi, the chairman of Indian Premier League > spelt out the reasons for the league’s standoff with television news channels and some of the major news agencies that were boycotting the third season of the T20 event which will be starting on March 12 onwards.

As per Modi, the IPL Board doesn’t have any such issues with right to news coverage and has come to an agreement with the news channels. This area of disagreement is only over the usage of IPL footage in post match packages and whose rights are with their broadcast partner, Sony.

The news agencies are more concerned on the conditions that they cannot sell the photos in a commercial basis or give them to any cricket related websites. Modi also added that there have been lots of instances in the past when such photos have been used for commercial purposes. One cannot use them to sell shampoo.

Further, the IPL chief claimed that such restrictions which are on usage of video footage and even still images by non rights holders were nothing sort of new in any such international sports events and still existed in the Olympic Games, NBA leagues and the Olympic Games. Modi asserted that they had taken this issue seriously and improved on each and every aspect and also made the guidelines friendly.

On the other hand, with such standoff between the IPL> and the media, the former seems to be making many such changes in it’s “media accreditation and also in the news access guidelines”. This would definitely make it rather uneasy for any of the news organization to accept them on many counts.

As per the new guidelines put forward by the IPL Board, there are many important departures from 2008. Most of them are placed with severe restrictions on television channels, magazines and websties too. The restrictions totally depend on the nature of media ownership, which are bound to face stiff resistance.

As per the new updated guidelines, the TV news channels can use less than 30 seconds of fresh footage from the IPL for each bulletin and not more than 120 seconds for each match. Also, there should be a seven minute limit for a full day with repeats only three times a day against the earlier four.

Live Telecast means the entire time from the first ball to the post match ceremonies. This guideline also stipulates a minimum delay of thirty minutes from the live telecast against five minutes in 2008. Live streaming which used to be on the broadcaster’s own website would be no longer allowed. Nor is archived footage allowed to be displayed on the broadcaster’s own or a third party website. With right to the archival footage, the permission is to have maximum of two clips of thirty seconds each per day rather than the two minutes per day.

However, one change can prove to be problematic and this is the manner in which the guidelines define “bona fide news media website” and “bona fide news magazine”. Lifestyle or travel magazines will be ruled out from carrying any IPL content. These guidelines place restrictions on the ownership nature of media organizations which are eligible.