I don’t watch a whole lot of NFL since I am mostly into the college game. But for some reason today there were numerous games of interest and so I watched. Specifically, the New Orleans Saints against the Atlanta Falcons. The game went into overtime. They showed the Falcons’ aborted drive and the Saints’ following drive which ended in a missed field goal… then they stopped showing the game. What the Heck?! They said that NFL Rules meant that they had to leave the game but they would “keep us posted” and now they’re showing Howie Long, Terry Bradford, Jimmie Johnson, and others talking about other games in the league. Dude… the defending national champions are in an overtime game in a divisional game and I don’t get to see it?!
Why would the NFL do this?! I can only think of two possibilities. First, it’s not the NFL so much as FOX that is the culprit because FOX paid some lesser amount for only x-hours of play. Second, the NFL is trying to get you to get the Season Pass, where maybe the game is still showing? But most people don’t even have the option of getting the Season Pass because it’s only available with DirecTV.
What’s particularly strange about this is after the Heidi Bowl it was the NFL that demanded that games be shown in their entirety and not be pre-empted by other programming. Now, this didn’t apply to overtime (which didn’t exist back then), but you would think that the same spirit would apply.
Does anyone know what the rule is here that would force FOX to turn away from an exciting overtime game?
I have just been notified that the Falcons won. They let me see the game-winning kick in replay. Oh, boy.
Lame.
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From the linked Wikipedia article on the Heidi Bowl:
Typically, professional football games in that era were completed in under three hours.
How times have changed.
The Bucs have been blacked out all season due to lack of sellout crowds (another NFL rule.) I looked to see how much a ticket would cost. The cheapest ticket for next month’s game is $81, and that’s up in the third tier.
I saw a USF game from those same seats. (They play in the same stadium.) It cost me $11.
My father is big into football, but he hasn’t been to an NFL game since 1964. He’s always said it’s too expensive, and he’s right.
Anyway, when I saw the movie Big Fan, I found it a bit silly how the two characters watched the game. But now I can relate.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty good.
http://bigfanmovie.com/
The blackout rules made a lot more sense back when ticket sales were assumed to be the primary source of revenue. Now, however, they get so much from television and merchandising that withholding games just hides the brand. Allowing local fans that can’t afford to go to games the opportunity to follow the games seems like a better route than blackmailing them to buy tickets they can’t afford. When a team isn’t selling out, they need to increase rather than decrease interest and visibility.
Like you, Kirk, I look at the price of college tickets and the price of professional games and just kind of shake my head. Another reason to prefer the college game.
For anyone from the New York or Washington areas, the mere concept of an NFL game that is not completely sold out is impossible to comprehend.
They showed the Falcons’ aborted drive and the Saints’ following drive which ended in a missed field goal… then they stopped showing the game.
Criminal.
and now they’re showing Howie Long, Terry Bradford, Jimmie Johnson, and others talking about other games in the league. Dude…
Most NFL punditry, especially that of Fox, is really, really lame these days.
I miss Howard Cosell. Seriously.
This isn’t FOX’s fault; it is the NFL’s.
The NFL wanted you to switch to CBS at 415 to watch IND/DEN. They would have made an exception if ATL/NO was your original game; however all bonus coverage much cease at 415.
Remember, it is all about commercials. All of the ATL/NO commercials had aired already. Therefore, there was no good reason (in their minds) to let you continue to watch the game. The Heidi rules only apply to those who were watching that game from the beginning, in this case pretty much just SEC country.
The NFL has a set of rules whereby certain networks (mostly the “original three”) get “exclusive time” where theirs is the only station allowed to be showing football on over-the-air at certain times.
This does, occasionally, mean that Fox gets screwed out of finishing a game if it goes into overtime. They’re not allowed to finish their broadcast of the game because it bumps up against someone else’s “exclusive time.”
Not sure if that is what they meant for your incident, but I know it has happened before.
Also, the “Heidi Rule” has pretty much vanished these days. There hasn’t been a big enough game with a Heidi Violation to set off widespread annoyance in recent years, so the NFL’s more concerned with extracting the big bucks for regional-market exclusivity even at the cost of finishing the games on TV.
Mike & Web,
Okay, that makes sense. I didn’t see that there was one and only one other game on. Pretty pathetic.
The funny thing is that I was just thinking, before all that happened, that one nice thing about the NFL is that you can more reliably get the games if you want to instead of the mishmash of conference-TV contracts in college football. Maybe the NFL is still superior if they continued to show the game on Season Pass.
I wonder if it did show up on there?
Well, whatever the faults with the CFB setup, at least I don’t have to put up with this crap. If I can find a game, I can watch it until the end.
Maybe the NFL is still superior if they continued to show the game on Season Pass.
I wonder if it did show up on there?
Yes, it was shown from beginning to end on Sunday Ticket. The only games they don’t show are those on your local broadcast stations (to protect commercials) and non-sellouts within 75 miles of the stadium (to protect the gate).
Two FYIs:
1) Sunday Ticket and Fox are part of the same corporate family (News Corporation).
2) The bald man on the Fox studio show is Terry BradSHAW.
The only games they don’t show are those on your local broadcast stations (to protect commercials) and non-sellouts within 75 miles of the stadium (to protect the gate).
That’s why I wasn’t sure about this game, since it was on local TV. Seems to me that it might be the sort of game to fall through the cracks. So they just start showing the game when it flips off of Fox?
BradSHAW… yes. I should have remembered that for a couple of reasons.
I didn’t realize that Fox owned Sunday Ticket. I thought it was just a package that DirecTV (and thus the NewsCorp) purchased from the NFL.
I wasn’t clear. DirecTV doesn’t own Sunday Ticket per se; they pay the NFL for the exclusive US rights. I also didn’t realize that DirecTV isn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of NewsCorp; they only own 60%.
Regarding the early Fox game on Sunday, I will assume that KCLE, your local Fox affiliate, started by showing the DAL/HOU game. Once DAL took a 24-6 lead with 9:53 remaining, they were allowed to switch away to a better game. When that happened, the blackout on that game would be lifted on Sunday Ticket. At the same time, when KCLE started to show ATL/NO, that game would be blacked out on Sunday Ticket.
Incidentally, the Fox affiliates in Texas didn’t switch until the DAL/HOU game ended.
Since I don’t have Sunday Ticket, I don’t know how efficiently they handle switching which game is being blacked out at any particular moment.
Ahh, okay, that makes sense. I’ve been doing some looking around at what their TV contracts and blackout rules and whatnot look like. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.