Minnesota Vikings: don't videotape our injured players

Exactly.

 

Bullshit. If the team shuts you out, you're crippled in your market.

I'm talking about the station depending on the team to provide players to appear on the station's help-the-kids-get-winter-coats telethon and depending on the team to get players to do PSAs with the station's anchorpeople, and depending on the team to deliver a gaggle of wives to appear on the "Good Morning Green Bay" show.

If the pro football team is the hot topic in your town and you don't have the cooperation of the local team, you might as well be dead. I'm not talking about the sports segment, I'm talking about everything else. If you're not on the bandwagon, you lose.

Jenny Anchorgirl has an exclusive sitdown with Joe Quarterback, tonight at 6. We look into Mike Lineman's interesting hobby, tonight at 11. We go behind the scenes with Ronnie Receiver as he makes a new commercial.

THAT's the kind of shit stations lap up. When the local team is doing well, viewers can't get enough of the hometown heroes and the stations will go wall-to-wall if they can. If you don't have an "in," with the station, you might as well run "Cheers" reruns, because you're dead.

 

Smasher, with all due respect, the numbers don't support what you're saying.  You're about 10 years behind TV industry trends.

Ratings are broken down by the minute now, so we are able to see exactly what rates and what doesn't.

Sports on local TV does not rate these days.  Almost every station in the country is seeing a big dropoff when sports comes on, or when any sports-related story comes on. 

Where are you, Pittsburgh?  I can see why your perception might be a bit skewed because the Steelers are so big there.  The dropoff may not be as big there.

It might surprise you that -- maybe not Cheers -- but reruns of shows like The Simpsons and Seinfeld beat the news senseless in the ratings.

Here, Smasher.... To illustrate my point, I'll post a couple of tidbits from today's Newsblues, a TV industry newsletter.  The story below has to do with the new regs the NFL has put in place forbidding locals from shooting games.

As you can see, the K.C. stations are doing away with those fluff pieces you mentioned-- and I'm sure will be no worse for the wear... And a Phoenix station has decided not to travel.  They won't be dead in their market, trust me......................

From Newsblues:

From Kansas City, we hear that local stations "have banded together to agree not to shoot or cover any of the fluff NFL stories during the week of players visiting hospitals or handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving."

We suspect this is their tiny way of protesting the NFL's monopolistic ban on sideline photographers, but, frankly, that sort of crap NFL story never belonged on the air in the first place.

"I know it changes our coverage," said Craig Fouhy, sports director at KNXV-15-ABC in Phoenix. "We won't be traveling with the team because we can't shoot the game. When we get strictly sound after a game, it's not worth the money we have to spend to send a reporter and photographer on the road for two days."

Stations that don't travel - and decisions on that probably will be made on a game-to-game basis - will have to rely on the goodwill of sister stations to provide specific video they might need for same-day or future stories.

 

And if the Chiefs have a great season and have a shot at the SB, all that big talk will disappear and everyone will be scratching to be "your" Chiefs station.

You think the Cincinnati stations didn't go apeshit last year when the Bengals finally had a good season? You think Cleveland won't if the Browns ever win again? Philly was in freaking crisis mode last year because of the Eagles meltdown.

This isn't about sports, it's about the NFL. Whole different animal.

When the hometown team is doing well, everyone is on the bandwagon. Even non-sports fans.