Indian Premier League declares peace with media

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Mumbai, Apr 15: Call it their PR skills or a last minute peace strategy - the BCCI led Indian Premier League and Sony Entertainment Limited is waving the ‘white flag’ towards the media. This reconciliation comes after the warning issued by the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) to the IPL committee that unless it reconsiders its prices for news coverage and concedes the NBA demands within business hours of Tuesday, it will take ‘concrete action’, which could have led to a possible boycott of the 44-day tournament. The media accreditation rules issued by IPL also stated that newspapers for its websites and news wires could use a maximum of six pictures. The tournament will officially kick-off on April 18 in Bangalore.

Lalit Modi, chairman and commissioner, Indian Premier League, said, “All publications and wires giving substantial coverage to the tournament can use reasonable quantity of photographs. There will no restriction on the number.”

Speaking to FE, Kunal Dasgupta, CEO, Sony Entertainment Television said, “We have decided to give free footage of upto three minutes absolutely free. Beyond that, we have set different tariff rates depending on the amount of footage each broadcaster will require. However, no clip should be more than 30-seconds. Moreover, the free footages will be given only for news programmes. If it is an analysis on the tournament or some other programme besides news, then we might charge for the footages.”

Media reports suggest that a number of top brass of the electronic media met last evening to come to a decision on this. All the wire agencies, the Indian Newspaper Society, Sports Journalists Federation of India and the Editor's Guild also issued a letter demanding that IPL climbs down on media accreditation rules. Apparently, Modi and Hormusji N Cama, a representative of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) appointed by the INS preisdentBahubali Shah has seen all contentious issues concerning the media accreditation terms and conditions settled amicably.