Thou shalt not watch Super Bowl XLI on 55"+ projector.

[Barracuda]

I don't see how people aren't getting this, lol.

Id just go ahead and have a party anyways, just dont advertise it. also i was listening to the radio today and they said that cant say superbowl on the air . All the commercials said "the big game" and if you live in florida you know taco bob and he said in a commercial " since i cant call the big game what its really called ill just call it the superbowel... then went on to say get the taco bob superbowel special " ( he does commercials for some store for glasses )

 

[FoolKiller]

I don't agree with it. I can have my opinion right? When I go to church, I go FOR church. Either service or something directly related. Choir, regional conference, gospel concert, etc.

I did read his reasoning and I don't agree with it. I haven't watched the super bowl in 5 years. It's not a big deal to me and it's not a big deal to a lot of people. To use a church in that fashion, to me, doesn't make sense. How many beer commercials and other things almost every Christian church is against will be shown?

Not knowing their setup I can't comment on this, but I have seen churches do this where they would have trivia and other activities during the commercials. It is easy to keep these things family friendly if you just plan a little.

Basically, I feel bad the church got into a bind but I'm not ready to say the NFL has no right in this situation to ensure their product is not abused.
"Private Use" means private use.

I don't disagree that the NFL was fully within their legal rights here, but my issue is that the NFL doesn't show a lot of care for their fans. What makes teh NFL look ugly here is that when the church changed things to meet the initial complaints the NFL came back to add to their complaint. They should have either given the full list of issues at the beginning or let it go once it became obvious the church wasn't creating a profit-making venture out of it, but trying to make the game more enjoyable for their members.

(on a side note, the church should just consider buying a few cheap 30" TVs instead of a big nice 55" projector)

Yeah, I thought they should do this or have members bring in any TVs over 30" and under 55" that they could.

Judging by the NFL's Columbo style of coming back it wouldn't surprise me if they said, "Oh yeah, you are limited to one TV as well."

Because a church is classed as a public place.

No because your house is private property. If your friend decided to set that projector up in the local park, the street or down at the local pub., he would be breaking the law.

I understand that but their reasoning that the laws are protecting the financial structure of OTA television comes off as pure BS when you say it is fine in some places where they don't have to pay a fee, such as a private home, but not in other places.

Then, as I argue many times, someone really needs to define the difference between public and private for the lawmakers in this country. They seem to get it right when they talk about working in the private sector or the public sector but then apply a different meaning when they begin creating regulations. Maybe they can explain to me how a private business, or in this case private property, becomes a public place when regulations are made.

I thought CBS wasn't getting the Super Bowl ever again after what happened in 2004! Either that or Janet Jackson was banned from football...

MTV isn't getting to do the halftime show anymore. Viacom owns both CBS and MTV, so the confusion is easily understandable.

 

[Dave A]

I understand that but their reasoning that the laws are protecting the financial structure of OTA television comes off as pure BS when you say it is fine in some places where they don't have to pay a fee, such as a private home, but not in other places.

In private homes the average number of people watching the game on one TV will be for arguments sake, 2 people. So say 20,000,000 people watch in thier private homes, thats 10,000,000 TV's tuned into that even, that's 10,000,000 TV's generating money from the sponsors of that even ect. Now you transfer that TV into a pub, and the aveage number of people viewing let's say suddenly becomes 15 people per TV, pubs usually have several TV's. So say there's an average of 200,000 pubs with an average of 3 TV's in each, that's 27,000,000 people watching on 600,000 TV's. That will not generate any notable revenue in comparison to the money made from the people watching at home. So they get around this by charging public places, businesses ect higher licensing fee's to watch the event. So now each pub say has to pay $250 per TV to watch the event, that's $750 per pub so thats $150,000,000. We're talking huge ammounts of money here, not pennies.

The simple reason is that they can't regulate how many people will be watchign each TV, theres no way they can monitor that and no way they can enforce any rule on that. So they use averages, there's going to be more people watching at this type of location, than that type of location. Private viewing in your house is already covered by TV license fees, channel subscription fees and/or pay per view fees. They can't throw more charges onto you if you decide to invite 10 mates round to watch it, besides, even if they could, they would probably never know unless you were daft enough to tell them. It's the same with a pub, they don't know how many people will watch at this pub or that one, so they just have different broadcasting licenses for thoes places.

 

[Danoff]

They don't really know how many TV's were tuned in anyway because they can't monitor that. They take polls to find out how many TVs were tuned in - but they could just as easily poll for how many people watched someplace (not necessarily at home).... and they do to a certain extent. I've done a TV ratings survey, they ask you to list how many people were watching at a given time.

Ads cost more because they reach more people, not because TVs broadcast them to empty living rooms.

 

[Dave A]

Over here they have a selection of people who have a box you connect to their TV's and every now and then it sends a message that pops up on the TV and they tell it what channel they're watching.

 

[FoolKiller]

Over here they have a selection of people who have a box you connect to their TV's and every now and then it sends a message that pops up on the TV and they tell it what channel they're watching.

But does it identify which family members are watching? In the US a "Nielsen Family" will have a box like you described, but everytime someone comes in to watch they are supposed to enter their special code and then "logout" when they leave. This allows for demographic data as well as numerical data. They are playing with the idea of using facial recognition software in order to remove teh human error aspect of people forgetting to log in with their code.

However these are very small samplings (maybe a few thousand out of 300 million nationwide) and in our current case of the church it is highly likely that none of the members are a Nielsen Family, thus no advertising revenue numbers would be skewed.

There are also the families that fill out random surveys and others that keep a one-week diary. In both these cases number of people in the room with you is tallied as well as what you were watching, when, and where. I have done one for radio ratings once and I was to keep track of radio listening even in my car, or any situation where I heard an identifiable radio station for more than 15 minutes. In either of these cases the church situation would not mess with the advertising numbers because the viewers would be counted.

 

[Pako]

I was in violation all day yesterday so I moved the party upstairs away from the 60" to a nice and fully compliant 32" CRT.

Honestly, that's ridiculous.

 

[Swift]

This must be a really old law that was designed for the technology at the time. Considering you can have non-projection 60 inch screens, it's just an outdated law.