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Spoil Sport!

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Reined in and shut out… Olympics 2012 casts a cloud over news and movie channels

The London 2012 Olympic Games kick started yesterday. But whilesports aficionados are awaitingthe most prestigious sporting event in theworld, some broadcasters are left in thelurch. The international event that is heldevery four years will go on from July 27 -August 12, and it has come with a list ofpredicaments this year.

To start with, broadcasters have been slapped with a list of rigid rules and regulations. According to the News AccessRules of the London Organizing Committeefor the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), news channels have been barred from flashing even newsbreaks of achievements of foreign as wellas Indian sports persons.

In India, the telecast rights for theevent rest only with Doordarshan and ESPN Star Sports. And thus, while a channel can make an announcement whenever an Indian wins a medal, it can procure the footage only around three hours later. In fact, non-rights holders can use a maximum of only six minutesof Olympic footage per day, according to the News Access Rules.                                        

Besides, the footage cannot appearin more than three news programmes a day and its duration cannot exceed two minutes in any one news programme. All this has left news channels fuming.

As if that wasn’t enough, the sports event may also spell doom for English movie channels. According to media planners, the target audience for sports is similar to that of movie channels (male18 to 35, SEC A and B).

In 2008, when the Indian PremiereLeague (IPL) was launched, most Englishmovie channels pooh-poohed any threatfrom the matches but when the TRPsemerged, movie channels launchedprogramming around the matches. Thus,PIX, HBO and Star Movies came up with PIX Premiere League, Hollywood Premiere League and Superstar League respectively. English movie channels thuswitnessed a trend where the male audiencewatched late-night movies, after the matches concluded for the day.These channels thus earned high TRPs in the night slots.

And it’s not just cricket. A few monthsago, the Euro Cup fetched healthy TRPs for sports channels. According to TAM, the total television tune-ins for the first 27 games of UEFA Euro 2012 has seen a phenomenal growth of over 33 per cent over the last edition. Besides, viewership rating has grown by 27 per cent among the core football audience.

Viewership at the end of the tournamentalso surged. There was a stellar growth of 63 per cent in the averagerating of the quarter finals compared to the group stage. In fact, viewership of the quarter finals has grown a whopping 45per cent since Euro 2008.Now, with the Olympics, most mediaplanners feel that English movie channelswill take a hit. A spokesperson for PIX remarks, “We have not planned any special programming around the Olympics.Though our primary TG is the male audience,we presume that only older men will be watching the event. Our core TG is the youth and they are not interestedin anything other than cricket.”


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