KOLKATA: Commercial banks in the country hold a relatively negligible news space in the television spectrum compared to their advertising budgets. 

Also, CNBC TV18 continues to occupy the top slot in banking news space followed by Bloomberg TV.

According to a study conducted by Esha Media Research, State Bank of India (SBI) among all the other banks including the regulator –the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) occupied the maximum space on TV of 20.30 hours in the month of May 2014 that was equivalent to spending Rs 32.73 crore on advertising.

“In other words, SBI, which has an annual budget of close to Rs 400 crore as per its annual report, got itself covered on the merit of news worth Rs 32.73 crore,” said media monitoring agency Esha Media Research managing director RS Iyer.

“Even if the annual budget of SBI is shared in equal proportion between print and TV, the gap between news space and advertising space is extremely wide,” Iyer added.

The study covered around 10 banks, both from the public and private sector. The total coverage cumulatively achieved in terms of advertising replacement value on TV was Rs 231 crore in May 2014 compared to Rs 214 crore in April 2014, Iyer informed referring to the study.

During the month of May, there was a trend reversal with public sector bank occupying more space than private sector banks, who had in April occupied more TV news space.

The Reserve Bank of India followed SBI in occupying more TV space though there was no credit policy statement during the month.  Fourth quarter earnings of banks were key topics that governed the news spectrum during the month.

Among the individual spokesperson, RBI governor Raghuram Rajan occupied the top slot followed by Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra Bank.