New Delhi, April 22 (Inditop.com) The Indian Premier League (IPL) row is hogging prime time coverage in national news channels, edging out even issues like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s foreign visit and the massacre of security personnel by Maoists, reveals a study.
IPL chief Lalit Modi’s revelations about the involvement of a friend of Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor in the Kochi IPL franchise, which forced the minister to quit, has triggered the biggest crisis in Indian sports history.
With the controversy turning murkier, TV news channels covered the IPL story extensively to grab the share of eyeballs, said the study by the CMS Media Lab of six channels: Aaj Tak, STAR News, Zee News, DD News, NDTV 24X7 and CNN IBN.
It showed that from the time the IPL story broke out till April 19, involving alleged financial irregularities over the purchases of various teams and franchises, it got about 40 percent of prime time coverage in the channels.
These channels ran 369 reports and 50 special programmes on the issue. The controversy recorded 2,623 minutes and 55 second (43.73 hours) of prime time coverage.
The government has launched multiple probes into the financial dealings of IPL, franchises and various companies linked to them.
The study found that English news channels gave more news time to the IPL row compared to their Hindi counterparts.
NDTV 24X7 devoted 668 minutes and CNN IBN 617 minutes and 30 seconds. Among Hindi channels, STAR News topped with 504 minutes and 45 seconds of coverage.
Aaj Tak and Zee News spent 404 minutes and 354 minutes respectively.
DD News gave the least prime time coverage to the IPL row — 75 minutes and 40 seconds and just 32 reports.
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