NEW DELHI: Five and half minutes of news footage of the Indian Premier League will now be available on all the news channels as the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) and IPL authorities have met and resolved the issue.

The channels will have to pay nothing for up to that duration to the IPL match footage, sources said.

Some of the news channels today, when the blackout entered its second day, started making the visual announcement in faded fonts across the screens, that IPL news will now be available.

Times Now CEO Chintamani Rao, who is the chief negotiator for the NBA on this issue, told indiantelevision.com, "NBA and IPL have met and resolved the issues. The negotiation ended last night."

Asked whether the IPL authorities have agreed to give the news clippings footage free of cost, Rao refused to divulge the arrangement. "All I want to say is that we have resolved all issues and the case is closed. IPL news will be back on the news channels," Rao said.

However, industry sources said that though the news channels had demanded seven minutes of free news clips per match, and the IPL had refused anything gratis, the final agreement is that the news channels will get five and half minutes of free footage from all IPL matches

This followed a protracted negotiation that lasted more than two days after the NBA went blank on IPL news from the midnight of 15 April.

IPL had already agreed to the terms and conditions of the newspapers and news agencies regarding use of photographs taken by them at the mega sporting event.