MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) has released its news access regulations for broadcasters in India intending to report on the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 and its warm-up matches which will be staged across 14 venues in Australia and New Zealand from 10 February to 29 March 2015.
The regulations are solely for bona fide news broadcasters registered under the category of News and Current Affairs channels according to Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s downlinking guidelines. The regulations have been based on and reflect the current law in India governing news access. The regulations will remain in full force and effect until 24 hours after the end of the last match of the event.
To ensure complete fulfillment of the news access regulations, the council will be appointing a media agency to monitor compliance with the regulations. In the event of any non-compliance it will take legal action against the non-compliant party; such action may include issuing proceedings and/or seeking injunctive relief.
Some of the guidelines state that a designated broadcaster may telecast a maximum total of five and half minutes of footage per news day during its news and other programmes. The broadcast of any footage may be repeated during a news day and any permitted repeat shall not count towards the maximum total allowed.
Use of live footage by a news broadcaster is not permitted at any time under any circumstances. There must be a minimum of at least thirty minutes delay following the broadcast of any live footage by the official/host broadcaster before any extract of such footage may be used by the broadcaster. However they are permitted to interrupt regular news programmes and/or other news programmes to broadcast footage using the caption ‘breaking news’ or such equivalent, only for a period not exceeding fifteen seconds and for no more than one exhibition of footage within thirty minutes following the broadcast of such live footage by the official host to report the achievement of an important personal milestone by a player (for example, a hat-trick of wickets falling, 100 wickets being taken, or 1000 runs being scored) or other exceptional events that may occur during any match of the mega event.
No use of any footage is permitted in any circumstance for any commercial purposes. In the event that the official event or the logo of its appointed broadcast licensee in India (i.e., Star India) should be covered by the logo of the broadcaster. It must include a courtesy line extended at the bottom of, or elsewhere, on the screen.
