NFL thinks Super Bowl _deserves_ ratings
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
This article from the Star Tribune (originally in the Los Angeles Times) is enfuriating. The article, running Super Bowl Sunday, talks about a little-known law — yes, law – that prohibits NFL games, including the Super Bowl, from being shown in public venues on big screens.
“Sports bars are specifically exempted,” the article says, but no other public venue can air NFL games on a screen larger than 55 inches. If you want your crowd to huddle around a 54-inch TV, that’s kosher. This law has resulted in several churches canceling Super Bowl parties in fear of pissing of the NFLs law Nazis, and it also gave the NFL grounds for rejecting a request to have the Super Bowl played on the big screen at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Come on, you heartless bastards!
The truly angering part is the reason for the law:
“The intent of the law, which dates to the 1960s, is to protect the NFL’s television ratings by preventing large crowds from gathering to watch games in public places — where their viewing habits can’t be measured by the Nielsen ratings. (The ratings only measure viewership at home.) Sports bars and other businesses that rely on televised sports to draw patrons are exempt.”
To recap: The damn NFL thinks — and the law gives it reason to think — it is entitled to high ratings. I understand why it wants the highest ratings numbers it can get, but the idea that the league is actually entitled to them is absurd, especially when the games are broadcast on public airwaves, as was the Super Bowl and most other NFL games.
What’s next? Will the NFL demand I sit and watch the commercials during the game — “No game at all if you don’t watch the whole broadcast!”? Will I be required to drive my car a certain number of miles each month to make sure I buy enough gas and need enough maintenance services?
Where’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation when we need it? Maybe a little out of the EFF’s realm, but someone must stop this madness.
Related items
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment