The NFL has decided to regulate online media outlets from showing more than 45 seconds a day worth of video coverage on websites, unless the league owns the sites of course.
The new policy covers everything shot by news organizations within team facilities. In addition to the 45-second-per-day limit, news organizations must also provide a link to NFL.com and a team’s Web site for any team-related footage shown on those Web sites. The league also prohibits news outlets from selling advertising tied to video gathered at a team’s facilities.
The reason the NFL is doing this is to generate more traffic to official team websites, which is crap in my opinion. Some of the worst coverage is done by official team websites because it’s mostly propaganda. There are some team sites that have message boards where fans can comment on various topics, but the sites remove anything said that’s even remolty negative. So, we as fans go to various other sources – like online newspapers – to get better information, but now the league is restricting these sites from even having a mintue worth of vido coverage. I know this doesn’t factor beat writers from doing daily write ups, but still, some sites do a nice job with video interviewers.
There’s an extremely funny video by the Houston Chronicle which takes a dig at this new relguation. You can check it out here.
