This affect local coverage here?

There went your tickets to the game?

 

Gantt tells me (via email) he's heard of no such policy, but doesn't rule out that it may happen.

 

Nah, I rarely shoot the game, maybe one a year. I buy my own tickets.

 

Living in NYC can seriously kill your NFL fanhood.

Until u learn to drink heavily at bars on sunday afternoons.

 

been confirmed that the measure was approved by the league...final vote to come in Dallas.

RTNDA is vigorously fighting it.

We will keep you informed.

 

Keep fighting the good fight.

This is HORRIBLE news for fans of the game, unless NFL Films comes in with about five more cameras (i.e. not gonna happen). One of those things people won't miss till it's gone. Good luck Mike, there's nothing like local coverage.

 

You know PFT is on it:

MEDIA GROUP URGES NFL TO LET LOCAL CAMERAS ON THE FIELD

In response to a measure passed at the recent NFL ownership meetings that has received precious little attention from the major media conglomerates who will benefit from the rule the most, the Radio-Television News Directors Association has called for a reversal of the decision to bar local television stations from the sidelines of NFL games.

In a letter to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and to the co-chairs of the competition committee, Rich McKay and Jeff Fisher, RTNDA president Barbara Cochran "urge" the NFL "in the strongest possible terms" to reverse the rule.

Cochran believes that the rule discriminates against television journalists, since the print media will continue to have access to the games.

"RTNDA's members are hard-pressed to understand the rationale behind your decision, which effectively prohibits coverage of NFL games by television reporters," she writes. "Even private entities should not be allowed to engage in behavior that impedes the media's right to gather and disseminate public information such as information about sporting events. Certainly, severely restricting the rights of the electronic media to gather news in publicly funded stadiums raises significant First Amendment questions."

Amen.

There's more:

"When electronic journalists are denied the ability to report on a news event with their own microphones, cameras and production crews, it allows newsmakers to determine the content of the news, a
result that is inconsistent with our society's democratic values."

Folks who work for local stations throughout the country generally are upset with the decision. For them, covering NFL games is one of the few perks of a job for which they are generally overworked and underpaid.

So if the rule isn't reversed, look for a backlash. For starters, the local affiliates will be less inclined to cover fluff activities undertaken by the hometown club. In the past, teams could rely upon a guy with a camera to show up for every pancake breakfast at the local animal shelter featuring the fourth-string fullback with the flap jack flipper that's too small for his sasquatch hands to grip. With this new rule in place, management might decide that there's something a tad more newsworthy to cover.

Also, don't be surprised to see some of the affiliates, which typically support the local team with a fervor bordering on unconditional love, to become more opinionated on the air when the local teams lose more games than they win. If, after all, the local stations are getting less access, there's less of a reason for the local stations to suck up to the teams.

Maybe, then, this actually will be a good thing for broadcast journalism. By taking the local TV reporters off of the sidelines, the local TV stations might take their noses our of the teams' rear ends.

 

If the NFL doesn't own all the stadiums, and they don't, and the owners don't own all the stadiums, and they don't, I really wonder what this rule means. Certainly a publicly owned stadium could have local reporters and cameras inside, even if the NFL didn't like it?

They need to drop this fight before it even starts, the more people who get word of it the worse it will look for the NFL. I've told everyone I can and will continue to do so, I can't believe the NFL is even trying this.

 

I'm gonna guess you don't work in media, so your opinion carries the weight of an outsider. And that is fine.

Being involved in this business is a priviledge, not a right. I don't know to whom you refer to with what I quoted, but thats a largely ridiculous statement.

 

If my local TV reporters didn't support the local team, I would find a TV station that did.