Doordarshan, which has bagged the exclusive rights of Olympics coverage for nearly Rs 240 million, will be airing nearly round the clock footage from Athens for the 15 days of the games. According to Prasar Bharati marketing head Vijayalaxmi Chhabra, Indian Oil, BSNL, Reliance , IRDA and Hero Honda have signed on as advertisers to the event.

Acknowledging that the Olympics were not expected to generate as much viewership as cricket in the country, Chhabra says she expects viewers to walk in and out of the channel during the Olympics fortnight. While some events like hockey could fetch better viewership, not all sports are expected to bring in eyeballs to DD Sports, which will exclusively carry the Olympics feed. DD National will air the highlights package.

A 10-second advertising slot is going for Rs 60,000 on both DD National as well as DD Sports, it is learnt.

Meanwhile, the pubcaster is learnt to be still working out deals for handing over limited footage to private channels, particularly news channels. Satellite channels, which thus far have had a free run of DD's exclusive footage, will this time have to stick to six minutes of DD Olympics footage in a day, and ensure that no bulletin carries over two minutes of the Games.