The Southeastern Conference of college sports earlier this month sent an updated media policy to the 12 member schools. The policy places new stringent limits on how much audio, video and "real-time" blogging they can do at events such as games, practices and new conferences. While the rules are stringent, they aren't that unexpected. What is really crazy, however, is that the same restrictions are placed on fans in the stands. That means, in theory, that fans are prohibited from updating Twitter, Facebook or their blogs from a game. It means no taking photos with phones and sending them to the internet for public viewing. In theory, it means no calling a friend during a game and telling them the score!
The SEC is a very wealthy organization. ESPN and CBS pay over $3 billion to them for the exclusive right to broadcast games over the next 15 years. They also own their own digital broadcast network and a robust SECSports.com web presence.
How, you might ask, are they going to enforce a rule like this in a stadium full of 90,000 fans? I'm not really sure, but perhaps they will take the tack that the music industry took and prosecute a few violators and try to fine them ridiculously large sums of money in order to make examples of them and scare the other fans.
Look, I'm all for protecting the intellectual property rights of exclusive content, and I know that fan-based videos from cellphones are not a threat to CBS or ESPN and won't be for a few years. In some ways, the policy is very forward-thinking as it anticipates a day when fans have very high-quality broadcast capabilities in their mobile devices. Even so, I hope that broadcast networks would augment their video feed with enough commentary, graphics, data and other content that a fan in the stands will still not be a threat to the currently established set of media companies. If they can't evolve, I say let them die.
Does the SEC really want to prevent fans from seeing great fan-taken shots from a game? Wouldn't the posting of images from a game in real time on a site like facebook get people to turn on their TV and watch a game? Seems like they are going after the wrong things with this policy.
Thanks to The St. Petersberg Times for writing a great article about this subject.
UPDATE: Seems the SEC was influenced by the real-time response to the article mentioned above. The day after the article was published, the SEC revised their policy to allow fans to send pictures and updates as long as they aren't for commercial purposes but still makes videos against the rules.
Leave a comment