Nothing makes news in India anymore than the IPL. The Indian Premier League is the umbrella organisation conducting an unofficial, purely entertaining, T20 cricket tournament in the country. The teams are owned by famous film stars like Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta, business magnates like Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya. The matches are telecast live during prime time in the country. Such is the craze that television ratings, both for entertainment and news, have taken a beating they will never forget. The news universe has actually shrunk by 5 per cent, and the news producers in the scores of news channels are at their wits' end trying to stay in the game. The entertainment channels are worse off, given their advertisement commitments. When the IPL announced the tournament, people and pundits laughed if off. The newspersons smirked. The entertainers wrote it off. Now is the time to lick the wounds.
What does this unmatched popularity for the IPL show mean in terms of viewers' tastes and their sudden shift from all news and entertainment? It is clearly a subject for primary research.
Friday, May 2, 2008
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