superbowl – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Superbowl Ads Try To Make 5G Sexy, But Consumers Still Aren't Buying The Hype

from the big-yawn dept

For years now, wireless carriers have struggled to make fifth generation wireless (5G) interesting to consumers. While the technology does provide faster, lower-latency connectivity, that’s more of an evolution than any kind of revolution. But in a bid to excite consumers (and justify high prices), wireless carriers have been pouring it on a little thick for years, trying to insist that 5G will somehow revolutionize the future, cure cancer, solve climate change, and generally turn America’s urban landscape into the smart cities of tomorrow. And don’t get me started on the “race to 5G.”

During the Super Bowl, Verizon used Jim Carrey and T-Mobile hired Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus to try and make 5G sexy, but most consumers still generally couldn’t care any less about 5G:

“5G service has yet to really resonate with consumers, said Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics. Entner notes that out of monthly surveys of 3,000 consumers, 5G service ranks 5th out of 9 categories for the most important reason to pick a new wireless provider, and 9th out of 9 as a reason to leave a provider. “Just saying my G is bigger than your G ? consumers don?t give a hoot,” Entner told Axios. “And that?s because we really haven?t seen these must-have applications that are reliant on 5G.”

On the one hand, wireless providers want to use 5G to target cable providers by offering home broadband services over 5G. The problem: these aren’t companies that have ever been all that interested in competing on price. And wireless still tends to come with odd caveats that make it an inferior alternative to technologies like fiber or even modern cable.

Most consumer surveys show that consumers generally want two things from wireless providers: more reliable coverage and lower prices. The industry isn’t interested in providing the second one (and thanks to telecom consolidation that’s not likely to change anytime soon). And 5G range in the U.S., has been hindered by a lack of “middle band” spectrum in the U.S., which, unlike high band spectrum (fast speeds, short distances), and low-band (good range, slower speeds), provides both decent speeds at a decent range. The lack of said spectrum has meant that U.S. 5G deployments are generally slower than most overseas deployments, creating an even bigger chasm between reality and hype.

Desperate to make 5G more interesting than it is, wireless carriers have taken to over-promoting what the technology can actually do. This almost always involves taking something you could theoretically already do over 4G or WIFI (like giving someone a tattoo on the other side of the country! or using special effects at concerts!) then pretending it’s only made possible thanks to the miracle of 5G. But time and time again, consumers have made it clear they’re not buying it. It’s even resulted in a 40% jump since 2019 in inter-carrier disputes over misleading ads, given even they know they’re full of shit on the subject.

Filed Under: 5g, mobile, superbowl

Like Clockwork, ICE Stops Sports Fans From Advertising Their Favorite Teams For Less Than Full Price

from the this-is-so-dumb dept

Two things that happen, like clockwork, every Super Bowl? Bogus completely fabricated claims that sex trafficking increases whereever the Super Bowl is held, and ICE making bullshit seizures of “counterfeit” sporting goods. This year, both Associated Press and the local Miami Herald ran bogus stories claiming that sex trafficking ramps up around the Super Bowl — a claim that every single year is debunked and unproven. Reason always does a good job debunking those claims. so I’ll just point you there for now.

On the “counterfeits” front, we’ve got a silly press release from ICE and plenty of news sources, like Fox News, gleefully cheering on the fact that fans won’t be able to provide free advertising to their favorite sports teams without paying the monopoly price set by the NFL. We’ve covered just how messed up these ICE raids are in the past, but just as a refresher: it’s completely fucked up that it’s somehow illegal for people to make or sell unauthorized sports wear.

It used to not be this way. It used to be that if you made your own fan ware, sports teams actually liked the fact that you were advertising their brand to the world for free. And then some trademark lawyers came along and said “hey, but we could sell people the right to advertise our stuff for us” and began going to court to stop people from promoting their teams without first paying. An astounding number of people buy into this ridiculous myth — but think about it: why should people have to pay monopoly prices to help advertise your sports team? It makes no sense at all.

What makes even less sense is the idea that ICE should be spending any time at all seizing goods that would allow fans to provide free advertising at slightly cheaper prices. How is this in the interest of Immigration & Customs Enforcement? I mean, if it means they’re not rounding up and kicking out people who have lived here their whole lives, I guess I’d rather them wasting their time on this, but somehow I get the feeling it’s not mutually exclusive. Anyway, the real bullshit here is that ICE — which does this before every single major sporting event — actually wants to pretend that it’s somehow doing a good thing for the world, rather than doing this because they know every single news org wants some dumb story with a “big sports event” hook, and so they know they’ll get press.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) announced Thursday the seizure of more than 176,000 counterfeit sports-related items, worth an estimated $123 million manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), through a collaborative enforcement operation targeting international shipments of counterfeit merchandise into the United States.

Also, note the 123million.Totheircredit,atleastthepressreleaseadmitsthatthat’stheMSRPprice.That’snottherealpricebyanystretchoftheimagination.ICEdidnotseize123 million. To their credit, at least the press release admits that that’s the MSRP price. That’s not the real price by any stretch of the imagination. ICE did not seize 123million.Totheircredit,atleastthepressreleaseadmitsthatthat’stheMSRPprice.That’snottherealpricebyanystretchoftheimagination.ICEdidnotseize123 million worth of goods. But, of course, the news reports leave out that detail, and just run with the $123 million number.

Even worse, ICE pretends that this is “protecting” fans, rather than actually fucking over the fans:

?Operation Team Player remains one of the most important national initiatives for protecting sports fans from the sale of counterfeit products and counterfeit tickets. The joint efforts of the NFL, the IPR Center, HSI, CBP, and Miami area law enforcement have helped ensure that Super Bowl LIV remains an authentic and outstanding experience for our fans,? said NFL Vice President of Legal Affairs, Dolores DiBella. ?The NFL is committed to supporting these anti-counterfeiting and consumer protection measures, and extends its gratitude for the year-round support of law enforcement partners who drove the success of Operation Team Player.?

It’s not consumer protection. You’re just forcing your fans to pay more to give you advertising. Meanwhile, reports have the NFL making somewhere in the range of $15 billion last year (some say the number is even higher). Why are they having to use your tax dollars to force the prices of their merchandise to be jacked up even more?

Filed Under: advertising, cbp, counterfeit, ice, licensing, sports, superbowl, trademark
Companies: nfl

Verizon's 5G Superbowl Ads Will Hype Nonexistent Firefighter Tech And A Barely Available Network

from the ill-communication dept

Wed, Jan 29th 2020 10:45am - Karl Bode

Speaking of over-hyping 5G: Verizon is planning to unload a significant mountain of 5G hype at the upcoming Superbowl, both via ads that will air during the game, but also with a deployment in the stadium itself. The company, still clearly sensitive to having been caught throttling and upselling firefighters during a recent historic California wildfire, is hoping to make its breathless adoration of firefighters a cornerstone of the ad campaign. Speaking to Ad Age, the company says its new ads will showcase 5G firefighter tech that doesn’t actually exist:

“In one spot, Verizon shows a firefighter wearing augmented-reality-powered glasses as he fights his way through a smoke-filled building during what appears to be a rescue attempt. It?s initially difficult to see much of anything in the video, but that soon changes once his wearable digitizes the room, allowing him to see through smoke as if he was in the ?Matrix.?

Such technology isn?t available today, but it is being developed at Verizon?s 5G Labs, which is an initiative within the company to develop use cases for 5G technology?s unprecedented speeds.”

Of course even if this tech actually existed, it wouldn’t be the 5G that lets you see through smoke, not that it matters to Verizon. When it comes to 5G hype, all the company has to do is point vaguely in the general direction of the company’s “5G labs,” which is more of a marketing construct than an actual serious lab, and reporters will sway unskeptically to the beat. For example Verizon has been repeatedly trying to claim that 5G will also somehow accelerate cancer cures, though when I’ve talked to actual medical professionals, they’ve noted that’s not likely and you’d be better off donating Verizon’s marketing budget to actual cancer research.

As we saw at CES, Verizon has this charming thing it does where it chastises other wireless carriers for over-hyping 5G, right before…over-hyping 5G. That tendency pops up again in the AdAge article:

?5G is much more than just speed,? McKechnie adds. ?The competitors have muddied the waters of what the perception of 5G should be. We have developed applications and other programs that allow us to demonstrate what we are able to actually do and give people and fans a taste of what 5G is capable of.”

Yes, what better way to show users what 5G can “actually do” than an ad featuring nonexistent, anti-smoke, 5G-powered, Neo Matrix goggles. Here on planet Earth, Verizon tells Ad Age it’s planning to advertise 5G by offering it at the Superbowl itself. But because the millimeter wave technology Verizon is using can’t penetrate walls or travel long distances, it can’t guarantee that it can even cover the full stadium. You’ll also have to pay Verizon extra to use it — assuming you have one of the tiny number of expensive, large phones that can actually support a 5G signal anyway.

Again, 5G will be a very good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, providing faster, more reliable (albeit probably more expensive and patchy) wireless networks. But it’s not some mystical revolutionary panacea, and the vast chasm between marketing hype and reality continues to only associate 5G in the mind of American consumers with bluster and empty promises.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, superbowl, superbowl ad, wireless
Companies: verizon

HowStuffWorks Attempts To Explain Why Advertisers Use Super Bowl Euphemisms, But I Have A Simpler Explanation

from the the-big-lame dept

It’s common knowledge at this point why advertisers start to go wonky after the new year. We’ve long talked about how all kinds of groups and companies suddenly begin playing the euphemism game when it comes to the Super Bowl, America’s annual celebration of brain trauma. Everyone, from comedians to beer makers to tech companies, goes to great lengths to wink at everyone as they all refer to the Super Bowl by any name other than its own. Why? Well, because the NFL has a trademark on the term, which allows it to restrict the user of the phrase only to its sponsorship partners… except that that’s not remotely true and isn’t how trademark law works at all. Instead, the only real prohibition is on the implication that a company is an official sponsor of the NFL when it isn’t. Beyond that, simply calling the game what it’s called isn’t trademark infringement.

But this is confusing enough that this year the website HowStuffWorks has done an entire piece to explain to an almost certainly confused public why companies are pretending that nobody knows what they’re talking about when they say “the big game” instead of “the Super Bowl.” It’s a post that deserves a rebuttal, which I will helpfully provide.

The Super Bowl is a registered trademark of the NFL. And the football league also owns the copyright to the telecast of the game. That’s why advertisers use unregistered phrases like “the Big Game” or “the football championship” when hawking a furniture sale or happy hour, for instance. The NFL allows the Super Bowl sponsors and the network airing the game that year to use the phrase, but they pay heavily for it.

Not true. Those advertisers pay to be official sponsors, not to simply use the phrase. Anyone can use the phrase Super Bowl as a means for accurately describing the name of the game about which they are talking. They just can’t claim to be sponsors, nor imply a relationship with the NFL. If Best Buy advertises a big screen television as the “preferred TV on which to watch the Super Bowl,” that’s a no-no. But if it says it is running a sale on big screen TVs and to get yours before Super Bowl Sunday, that ain’t trademark infringement.

So, the explanation for why advertisers don’t say “Super Bowl” in that manner isn’t because the NFL has the intellectual property rights to it, it’s because the NFL is a duplicitous money-monster that has perpetrated a farce in pretending trademark law is something that it isn’t.

“The NFL wants to make sure they keep their sponsorships the way they want to control who has use of the phrase,” says Anderson. “That way people can know what’s directly connected to the NFL and their product.” Trademark infringement occurs when someone uses a trademarked term (like “Super Bowl”) in a way that may cause a person to wrongly infer an official connection between the company the trademark belongs to and the product advertised.

The NFL absolutely wants that, and it regularly bullies anyone who uses the phrase in a nominative manner in any kind of advertising or social media. But the “how” part of HowThatWorks isn’t answered by trademark law. It’s a combination of the aforementioned misleading of the public along with the NFL’s regular practice of being a protectionist idiot.

Because the NFL should want the term said as often as possible by as many people, and companies, as possible:

It’s unnecessarily stupid for the NFL, which should want “Super Bowl” said as often as possible, because until 100% of TVs new and old are tuned to the Big Game, the league has not accomplished its goal of complete domination of American consciousness. Best Buy wants to have a Super Bowl sale? Great! That’s a free ad for the NFL, which should thank a non-sponsor for promoting their product.

This is not, however, how the NFL thinks. This is the same league that banned its own teams from posting GIFs of game highlights, ostensibly to protect its TV partners, as if any GIF-worthy play isn’t being turned into a GIF by a thousand different people and going viral anyway. Shouldn’t the league want its teams to reap the benefits of all those clicks, which convert to social media followers, which convert to deeper embedding of the product, through official channels, in the minds of consumers?

Nah, the league would much rather play language cop in a silly game it has made out of trying to alter trademark law simply by out-jackass-ing the Olympics. And, hey, it’s worked! By simply pretending trademark law is something that it isn’t, the NFL has managed to get the world’s advertisers to play pretend along with the league. And what a victory it is, what with every advertiser using barely-disguised euphemisms for the game that we all know they’re talking about. Victory!

So, how does this work? Not in the way HowStuffWorks describes. The NFL acts as a protectionist lie-geyser bully through a legal team on more figurative steroids than the league’s field-hands. That’s how it works.

Filed Under: super bowl, superbowl, the big game, trademark control
Companies: nfl

We first wrote about this issue in 2014, but the only known video recording of the very first Super Bowl only exists because a fan taped the TV broadcast, back in 1967. Now, as we’re about to have the 50th Super Bowl, the fight has not only continued, but according to a NY Times article, the fight has been getting nastier.

That NYT article also, for the first time, names the guy who has the tape: Troy Haupt, whose father went into his office and recorded (most) of the game, believing such a tape might be valuable some day. For the past few years, all anyone knew was that a lawyer named Steve Harwood claimed to represent an anonymous client whose father had taped the game. The game itself had been shown on both CBS and NBC, but back in those days, archiving stuff wasn’t a big deal, and neither broadcaster kept a copy of the tape. It wasn’t that long before people realized that might be a mistake and by then there was nothing left (as far as anyone knew), and many argued that it was one of the great “lost treasures.”

It was only after a 2005 Sports Illustrated article that talked about the fact that the video was lost, that a friend had reminded Haupt of the video in his mother’s attic. And, then, of course, came the copyright fight. The NFL (as it has a habit of doing) insisted that it, and it alone, held the copyright on the video, and Haupt would be infringing on its copyright if he tried to do anything with the video. Of course, Haupt and his lawyer still held the physical tape (which they had restored by the Paley Center, and stored in a place to keep it safe). And thus, we get to the difference between the copyright on the content, and the ownership of the physical item.

Haupt asked the NFL for 1millionforthetape—thepricethatSportsIllustratedhadestimatedsuchatapemightbeworth.TheNFLoffered1 million for the tape — the price that Sports Illustrated had estimated such a tape might be worth. The NFL offered 1millionforthetape—thepricethatSportsIllustratedhadestimatedsuchatapemightbeworth.TheNFLoffered30,000. And then there was a stalemate, with neither side budging for years, and the NFL constantly threatening a copyright lawsuit should Haupt do anything with the tape. With the 50th anniversary, Haupt thought that maybe the NFL would finally be willing to deal… but instead, the NFL showed a totally different video of Super Bowl 1 that was not the video of the actual broadcast. Instead, they went out and found a large number of “clips” from other sources, and patched it all together, claiming it’s the entire game, even if it appears really disjointed.

Apparently, now that the NFL (which makes billions) has its “tape,” it wants to be even more ridiculously petty towards Haupt. According to the NY Times:

And last week, Haupt was angry about another turn in the dispute. CBS backed out of a plan to interview him for a Super Bowl pregame segment that would have used a few minutes from the game. It had agreed to pay him $25,000 and give him two tickets to the Super Bowl. A producer was preparing to watch a restored, digital copy of the game at the Paley Center. A crew was ready to go to Manteo. He was going to tell his story, and perhaps the league would listen.

?It was my right to tell my story, and they were paying me for it,? Haupt said.

But according to his lawyer, Steve Harwood, the deal collapsed when he was told that the N.F.L. had ordered CBS not to pay him.

Just when you think the NFL can’t get more petty, it does exactly that.

Even more bizarre is that according to the NY Times, the NFL is insisting that Haupt isn’t even allowed to sell the physical tape to someone else:

Haupt owns the recording but not its content, which belongs to the N.F.L. If the league refuses to buy it, he cannot sell the tapes to a third party, like CBS or a collector who would like to own a piece of sports history that was believed to be lost. He would like to persuade the league to sell the tapes jointly and donate some of the proceeds to their favorite charities…..

This is bullshit, and hopefully Haupt’s lawyer has explained to both Haupt and the NFL that this is bullshit. The First Sale Doctrine still exists in the US, and it’s the reason that you can sell a copy of a physical book or painting without first getting permission from the copyright holder. The First Sale Doctrine separates the copyright from the tangible thing. So he absolutely can sell the tape, despite what the league and the article claim. Updated update: So I had originally crossed out this paragraph and thought maybe I’d gone too far with it, after someone pointed out that First Sale might not apply, because the first copy wasn’t legally purchased. But as a few others have commented (both below and in email), that may not matter. The question is whether the work was “lawfully made” under the Copyright Act… and we know that taping video off the TV is considered okay under the Supreme Court’s Betamax ruling. Thus, the first sale right could very well apply here.

But, even then, the NFL seems to make bogus copyfraud arguments, saying that if he does sell the tape, and the contents leak somehow, Haupt would be liable for any such release.

But that is unlikely to happen. A letter from the league to Harwood last year provided a sharp warning to Haupt. ?Since you have already indicated that your client is exploring opportunities for exploitation of the N.F.L.?s Super Bowl I copyrighted footage with yet-unidentified third parties,? Dolores DiBella, a league counsel, wrote, ?please be aware that any resulting copyright infringement will be considered intentional, subjecting your client and those parties to injunctive relief and special damages, among other remedies.?

Again, it’s not clear that this is true. The purchasing party may very well be liable for any infringement that results, but Haupt should be in the clear once it’s sold, so long as there’s no evidence that the sale was simply a sham to get the video released. Bizarrely, the NY Times quotes a copyright law professor claiming that the NFL is actually correct here:

The law favors the league, said Jodi Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

?What the league technically has is a property right in the game information and they are the only ones who can profit from that,? said Balsam, a former N.F.L. lawyer.

As David Post notes at the Washington Post, Professor Balsam is either woefully misinformed or was misquoted, because of course, you don’t get to copyright “game information” at all. Merely the specific expression which was the broadcast. In fact, cases revolving around data (such as scores) and factual information (such as names and stats) have come down quite clearly saying that the league does not own “game information.”

And I respectfully suggest that Prof. Balsam gets her copyright law wrong (or was misquoted) when she says that ?the law favors the league? and that ?the league technically has is a property right in the game information and they are the only ones who can profit from that.? The league doesn?t have a property right in ?the game information? at all. [There?s another case squarely on point that discredits this idea, too ? NBA v. Motorola from the Second Circuit (105 F.3d 842, 1997)]. The ?game information? ? who won, who lost, how many passes Bart Starr threw, how many time Kansas City ran running plays, the sequence of plays that led to Green Bay?s final touchdown, etc. etc. etc.] ? is not protected by copyright at all; only the broadcast is protected. And there is nothing in copyright law that says that only the NFL can ?profit? from that ? Haupt is entitled to get as much money from selling his copy as he can.

There’s also a separate issue that I haven’t seen reported anywhere, which seems like it should be relevant. The game was in 1967, which was under the 1909 Copyright Act, which required registration (“formalities”) in order to get the copyright. And, while it’s quite likely that CBS and NBC, who both broadcast the game, likely had a deal in place with the NFL where the NFL retained the copyright, there’s a question of whether or not the NFL actually did register that copyright in the first place. It’s entirely possible that, given the fact that no one actually thought it was worth keeping a copy of the video, that similarly no one thought it was worth it to register the copyright.

And that leads us to the final point. The NFL itself apparently couldn’t have been bothered to keep a copy of the video of the game itself, which is what makes the resulting situation particularly egregious and ridiculous. To claim ownership over the thing that you totally neglected to the point that you thought no longer existed seems ridiculous. It also raises the question of whether the NFL abandoned the copyright, even if it did register it. Copyright abandonment is a defense that someone accused of infringement can make, arguing that the copyright holder deliberately abandoned the work (leaving it in the public domain). Abandonment can be tough to show, however, since it requires showing that the copyright holder intended to abandon the copyright and performed an “overt act” to make it happen. You can argue that the intent was there in the failure to keep a single damn copy — but is that an overt act? Usually the “overt act” is seen as something like a declaration that the work is in the public domain. That obviously doesn’t exist here.

But, still, hopefully in the end people can recognize just how messed up copyright law is that it would reach this kind of stalemate, in which the public is deprived of such a historic event.

Filed Under: copyright, first sale, first superbowl, locked up, steve harwood, superbowl, superbowl 1, troy haupt
Companies: nfl

Key And Peele To Livestream 'Sports Commentary' During An 'Upcoming Sports Game' That They Can't Name

from the the-game-that-must-not-be-named dept

Every year about this time, it’s become a running joke what the NFL tries to do in controlling who says what about the Super Bowl. It’s gotten to such absurd levels that I’ve taken to calling it “The Game That Must Not Be Named.” Setting aside the insanity that is having ICE go piracy hunting just prior to the game to make sure that nobody can see the product outside of the official channels, the NFL also enjoys pretending like it can control how advertisers refer to the sporting contest. The key aspect of the NFL’s demand is that nobody can use the term “Super Bowl” in advertisements unless the company is an official sponsor. That, of course, isn’t even remotely true, but pretty much everyone buying ads bows at the NFL altar. This has also given birth to creative ways for advertisers to poke fun at the NFL for being such asshats, such as the Newcastle Brewing’s lovely entry a few years back, when it produced an advertisement about an advertisement it didn’t make, in part because the NFL wouldn’t allow them to say “Super Bowl.”

Well, the tradition continues, it seems, with Key and Peele promoting Squarespace by setting up a website to do “Game Day Live Commentary”, called Real Talk, with a timer countdown that appears to coincide with a big sporting event occurring this weekend. Notably absent at their site, with all kinds of information about what they’re going to be doing in terms of “sports commentary” on a “football” game, is any mention of the phrase “Super Bowl.” Because… the NFL. They even give a shoutout to this insanity in one of their promos.

While it would be easy to let frustration dominate while thinking about how the NFL’s overbearing stance has given rise to any of this, instead let the futility of it all sink in and enjoy a laugh at the NFL’s expense. Does anyone not know what Key and Peele are referring to? Of course not. Anyone confused as to what the timer at the top of the page is counting down to? Nope. Is there anyone at all that gives even a moment of thought to differentiating which ads feature the term “Super Bowl” and which use some stand-in term to dance around it? No, dear friends, there is not.

Meaning that the NFL has accomplished exactly nothing, other than to create an atmosphere where the advertisers they want to become sponsors choose instead to gain attention for themselves by mocking the NFL’s attempt at protectionism instead. That isn’t exactly the Streisand Effect, but it’s something similar.

Filed Under: key and peele, sponsorship, superbowl, superbowl superbowl superbowl superbowl superbowl, trademark
Companies: nfl, squarespace

Canadians Can't Watch 'The Real' Superbowl Commercials

from the ads-ARE-content dept

After 20 years living in the USA, I’m familiar with the scale of spectacle that is the Super Bowl (Mike, am I allowed to use that word here?) The annual championship brings in an estimated 111.5 million US viewers, according to Nielsen. But it seems our borders are somewhat porous, and the game also was viewed by some 8 million Canadians. The Big Game had “don’t touch that dial” benefits, as apparently some 1.6 million Canadians, dazed in a chicken wing and poutine coma, stuck around to watch MasterChef Canada. With that massive US audience, year after year, the price of commercial time for the game broadcast goes up, this year reaching $4.5 million per 30-second spot.

As a result of the high price of the advertising, and the size of the audience, the ads have also become better and better. No sense paying $4.5 million only to bore an audience. And because of the superior quality of advertising during the Super Bowl, the ads themselves have become an important part of the overall TV program, as much as the half-time entertainment, and to some such as myself, more than even the game itself.

As it happens, for the first time in two decades, last year I found myself settling in to watch the game with my Dad in lake country North of Toronto on his fine big screen TV with a Bell ExpressVu satellite TV subscription. And we tuned into the CTV feed of the game. When the first batch of ads started, it was clear to me that they were not the big-budget productions that I was expecting. You see, CTV bought the Canadian rights to the game from the NFL, and of course it has to sell its own ad inventory in order to recoup the investment. So, instead of the blockbuster Budweiser ads that were lighting up my Twitter feed, I was seeing Canadian Tire ads, or some sale on hockey sticks…I don’t remember. Many of the ads were clearly NOT premiere showings, nor even remotely well-produced.

“My error,” I thought, as I switched over to a US Fox affiliate that was broadcasting the game. And as the next batch of ads came on…poutine and hockey stick ads all over again! Why am I seeing Canadian-specific ads, when the channel I’m tuned to is the US Fox network? The TV package my Dad paid for specifically advertised and listed the ability to watch Fox, but I was most certainly being diverted during commercial breaks. What’s the story? Well, it seems it’s yet another case of government policy aimed at supporting some media company’s business model. Two years ago, the Globe and Mail’s Susan Krashinsky described it as follows:

The process is known under CRTC regulation as “simultaneous substitution”…So, whenever a U.S. station is showing the same program as a Canadian channel, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requires that upon request the cable or satellite provider must switch the American feed over so that the Canadian commercials are visible and the broadcasters’ rights deals are upheld.

Now, in many ways, it’s good for Canadians that CTV has re-broadcast rights, because this allows Canadians to receive free over-the-air transmissions of the game if they live within range of a CTV affiliate. But for the vast majority that subscribe to cable or similar services, “simultaneous substitution” or “simsub” actually removes value to the citizen, by reducing the range of programming options. And simsub can be even worse: If the “simultaneous” part is lacking, Canadians can actually miss part of the game itself while waiting for their ads to end.

The CRTC argued that this keeps advertising dollars in Canada and protects Canadian broadcasters’ rights. Protectionism, sans even bothering with a euphemism. Subscribers’ and citizens’ rights be damned. Doubtless that during the Super Bowl broadcast, CTV requested that Bell ExpressVu remove the ads from Fox, and insert the feed from CTV. Let that sink in. Canadians paid for access to view Fox in order to see Fox’s programming including Super Bowl ads, but their cable providers were required to take over our screens and run CTV ads. Canadians’ eyeballs were sold to CTV without consent. Canadian customers are being treated like a commodity that has been bought and delivered to CTV. Change channels, see the same programming — the same thing that happens in movies when some evil overlord or revolutionary takes over all the airwaves. No need for CTV to compete in any way for the viewership, just regulate for it.

The issue also brings up a common topic of discussion here at Techdirt, and that is: Where is the line between content and advertising? In 2008, Mike wrote “Advertising is content. You can’t think of ads as separate things any more.” But Mike also made the point that this is only true when the audience isn’t captive, and thanks to the CRTC’s compliance, CTV’s audience is so captive that switching to a competing channel gets you the same feed. How many Canadians actually care about seeing the ads from the TV channels they paid for? A large number of Canadians offered the CRTC their feedback mostly anti-simsub, although unsurprisingly the entire media industry stood in support of the existing procedures. Shaw Cable submitted the following:

There is no content objective of the Broadcasting Act that would be achieved by providing Canadians with access to U.S. commercials that are widely available on YouTube.

Yes, a major Canadian cable company just suggested Canadians seek TV content from YouTube. Oh, how confusing the world can get when content and ads start to blend.

According to the Toronto Star, “Canadians are more likely to search YouTube for ‘Super Bowl commercials’ than Americans, according to Google Trends.” And the number of Canadian YouTube ad searches don’t account for the cable and dish subscribers who aren’t aware that they’ve been diverted, or those who care, but won’t be bothered to sit down at their PC for ad binging. In fact, the viewing experience for the commercials, much like the Big Game, is very different on a big screen with a bunch of friends than it is alone on the next day with your 4″ smartphone’s YouTube app. But in fact, watching the ads on YouTube is what the CRTC recommends.

The valid arguments made by the media companies include the fact that simsub is a big profit earner for them, and that it offers Canadian businesses the ability to advertise to their market directly during a major event. The profits, some 250millionCDNtheysay,arerolledintosupportingandsubsidizingtheproductionofCanadianshowsandcontent,stimulatingthelocalentertainmentindustry.Whilearguablytrue,theendsdon’tjustifythemeans.Andthereisnoruleorguaranteethatthose250 million CDN they say, are rolled into supporting and subsidizing the production of Canadian shows and content, stimulating the local entertainment industry. While arguably true, the ends don’t justify the means. And there is no rule or guarantee that those 250millionCDNtheysay,arerolledintosupportingandsubsidizingtheproductionofCanadianshowsandcontent,stimulatingthelocalentertainmentindustry.Whilearguablytrue,theendsdon’tjustifythemeans.Andthereisnoruleorguaranteethatthose250 million are invested in starving artists. Regardless, the consumers are the ones really paying the bill here. They should have a choice. People that tune in to CTV should see CTV, and those that pay for and tune in to Fox…well, they should see Fox.

So while there will be no cable TV respite for Canadians hoping to see “the real” Super Bowl ads this weekend, as of this week, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The CRTC is suspending the simsub rule for cable operators starting with the Super Bowl of January 2017. Ostensibly this long lag will allow Canadian broadcasters to factor this new ruling into their negotiations for Super Bowl rights. Bell Media has the rights to the Super Bowl in January 2016, and has the option to ask for simsub, or not. Faced with a choice of “make more money or make less,” I’d guess Bell opts for simsub. Meanwhile the local affiliates who broadcast RF signals will still be allowed to simsub. And the CRTC is only talking about the Super Bowl here. Other popular broadcasts like prime-time US TV shows or the Oscar Awards will still allow simsub. Too complicated for me, I’ll just stay here in California for my Super Bowl fix this weekend… or maybe just sit out in the sun and watch some old NHL hockey reruns with a bag of salt ‘n’ vinegar chips.

Filed Under: canada, commercials, content, simsub, simultaneous substitution, superbowl

from the dirty-pirates dept

We’ve written a few times in the past about how the entertainment industry’s woeful job of preserving and archiving old works has resulted in culture being lost — but also how unauthorized copies (the proverbial “damn dirty pirates”) have at least saved a few such treasures from complete destruction. There was, for example, the “lost” ending to one of the movie versions of Little Shop of Horrors that was saved thanks to someone uploading it to YouTube. Over in the UK, a lost episode of Dad’s Army was saved due to a private recording. However, Sherwin Siy points out that the very first Super Bowl — Super Bowl I, as they put it — was basically completely lost until a tape that a fan made showed up in someone’s attic in 2005. Except, that footage still hasn’t been made available, perhaps because of the NFL’s standard “we own everything” policy. From Cracked:

It sounds crazy nowadays, but during the ’60s, NBC and CBS, who broadcast Super Bowl I, essentially had no archiving policy for anything other than primetime shows, so neither one kept a copy of the historic game beyond a few random clips. And seeing as home video technology was still a few years away, the broadcast footage was considered lost forever until a mostly-complete recording turned up in a Pennsylvania attic in 2005, made by a fan at a video production company.

And we have to emphasize “mostly” here — the copy is missing much of the third quarter, the entire halftime show, and several smaller bits. The Paley Center for Media tried reconstructing these parts using official sideline footage and fan-made audio recordings, but the last we heard about the project was way back in 2011, right around the time the NFL started claiming sole copyright ownership of the footage. Probably a coincidence.

Other reports explain in more detail that, indeed, the NFL stepped in to “protect” the work it had failed to originally protect:

The NFL has claimed ownership of the broadcast itself and while the Paley Center was allowed to keep a copy of the game, it cannot show it without permission from the owner of the videotapes, who reportedly would like to sell the tapes.

The original WSJ article about all of this details the NFL’s claim to the man who found the tape, who has remained nameless.

Mr. Harwood, the attorney, says he contacted the NFL in 2005 about the tape. He says the league sent him a letter on Dec. 16, 2005 claiming the NFL was the exclusive owner of the copyright. Mr. Harwood says the NFL offered his client $30,000 for the tape and his client declined. Mr. Harwood said his client would like to sell the tapes and make them available to the public if the legal issues can be resolved.

So the NFL failed to save it. A fan did. And now no one can see it because the NFL is claiming copyright over the footage it failed to protect. Great to see copyright “protecting” culture once again, huh?

Filed Under: copyright, culture, football, history, recording, superbowl, superbowl i
Companies: nfl

CBS Bans Commercial That Disparages Coke & Pepsi, But Lets Them Disparage Each Other

from the no-disruption-allowed dept

Oh, the benefits of incumbency. Sodastream is a cool new company that allows consumers to make their own carbonated beverages at home. Given its popularity, largely due to its ease of use, SodaStream’s stock has been on a run the last few months. It also possesses the potential to disrupt to established beverage companies like Pepsi and Coke.

Not surprisingly, SodaStream would like to advertise this fact. In fact, it is so keen on advertising the relative benefits of its product over the more traditional route of buying pre-made soda from the store that the company ponied up for a Super Bowl commercial. Unfortunately for SodaStream, the ad was rejected by CBS, not because it was too risque, but because it “disparages” other major advertisers (which is apparently more objectionable than borderline softcore porn a la GoDaddy and Mercedes). As Ad Age reported:

The content of its planned commercial seemed to have concerned CBS because it was a direct hit at two other Super Bowl sponsors and heavy network TV advertisers: Coke and Pepsi.

We’ve discussed elsewhere CBS’s newfound affinity for the ban hammer, but this isn’t even the first time this has happened to SodaStream. British regulatory authorities yanked Sodastream’s first major advertising campaign for “being too disparaging towards soda manufacturers like Coke and Pepsi.”

How disparaging was SodaStream that its ads were pulled from television? Well, it simply pointed out that SodaStream was more environmentally friendly than drinking off-the-shelf sodas because, with SodaStream, “you could save more than 2,000 bottles a year.” Wow, that is incendiary. Not safe for public consumption!

It gets better. Clearcast, the NGO — funded by the British broadcasters — that pre-approves most advertisements for British television, reportedly offered this rationale for pulling the ad:

The majority decided that the ad could be seen to tell people not to go to supermarkets and buy soft drinks, [and] instead help to save the environment by buying a SodaStream. [SodaStream] was also told that it constituted denigration of the bottled-drinks market.

Hypocritically, U.S. broadcasters have allowed Pepsi to air Super Bowl ads that bashed Coke directly, as Ad Age also pointed out:

Interestingly enough, Pepsi has scored big points with viewers over the years by showing Super Bowl ads with Coke deliverymen abandoning their employer wholesale for a sip of a Pepsi drink.

Moral of this story: Pepsi and Coke can attack each other over trivial differences in their products, but don’t attack the business model of big incumbent advertisers.

Fortunately, there is an upside for SodaStream. All the controversy that these ads have stirred has generated a buzz around them. The SodaStream “banned Super Bowl ad” has already generated more than two million hits on YouTube in two days and generated a media buzz around the company itself. And that’s without having to splash $3.8 million worth of cash for a Super Bowl commercial. Another example of the Streisand Effect in action.

[SodaStream is running a commercial during the Super Bowl, but it was forced to replace Coke and Pepsi with fictional soda companies. However, that ad only has a little more than 17,000 YouTube views in the last two days.]

Cross posted from Project-Disco.

Filed Under: ads, commercials, competition, disruption, soda, super bowl, superbowl
Companies: cbs, coke, pepsi, sodastream

One Of The Funniest S#*$r B$@l Ads You'll See This Year Makes Fun Of NFL Trademarks

from the big-game-or-whatever dept

It's almost that time of year again, when many of us lesser beings will gather together to watch super-human men on all manner of PEDs and deer antler urine sprays smack each other around while an oblong leather ball sits somewhere in the background. We’ll leap for the pizza and chili like salmon during mating season while, between whistles, obligatory commercials with Avatar-like production budgets glow at us. That’s right sports fans, it’s [editor redacted] time!

Wait, hey! What the hell? I said it’s [editor redacted] time! Oh, come on. I can’t say [editor redacted]? Fine, what about a euphemism, like [editor redacted]? No, can’t say that either? Maybe [editor redacted]? Damn it, this is stupid. I’m talking about something that rhymes with “Pooper Hole” (heh, got you, editor!).

Fortunately for our entertainment sensibilities, Samsung decided this year to combine a distaste for trademark stupidity and our concept of advertising being content in this gem of a spot.

Pictured: million dollar passive aggression

Yes, Samsung has decided to do a game-that-shan’t-be-named commercial making fun of how the NFL is overly aggressive with their trademarks. I’d call Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd’s delivery “brilliant”, but that’d be like referring to Natalie Portman as “mildly attractive”, and even I have some damned sense, people. The NFL likes to toss around a great deal of words and pretend like they’re true even when they’re not, especially when it comes to trademarks. This spot uses the absurdity of it all to highlight how aggressive they are. Maybe it will even open up an eye or two to the silliness of the ever-growing permission culture.

Filed Under: advertising, mocking, paul rudd, seth rogan, super bowl, superbowl, the big game, trademarks
Companies: samsung