Nobody can stop talking about the NFL. Me neither. Yesterday I wrote about the complicity of broadcast networks and sponsors (who by the way paid my salary for more than 25 years) in this issue of women’s and children’s safety. I’ve never seen so many tone-deaf people in my life. Even CoverGirl can’t seem to get it right.
But today, on Microblog Monday, I have another question. What do we do about this world of modern gladiators in a game that damages their brains until many of them are never able to think clearly again? How do we protect them from the impact of the conditioning and brutality that is part of their work? And what is the difference between NFL owners and those who sent Rome’s ancient, doomed fighters into the Coliseum?
We need to do something (HINT: #boycottNFLsponsors)
Why is it so hard to affect the NFL and its disgraceful responses to abusive players? After all, women are45% of the NFL fan base. It makes sense to care what we think.
Sadly, there’s that other thing. To see what we’re up against, follow the money.
Team owners make money from tickets and souvenirs but even more from TV contracts and the networks who pay for them. It’s all nicely divided up. In the 2011 9-year NFL-broadcast contract, CBS gets American Football Conference games – and is asking $500,000 for thirty second spots, according to Forbes, Fox carries the National Football Conference and NBC broadcasts Sunday night in prime time – with ads going for $628,000/30-second spot. Each network gets an exclusive crack at three of the nine Super Bowls and all the revenue that comes with it. (Bloomberg News)
Here’s what Forbes said this time a year ago, “Live appointment television—already extremely important—will only grow in significance in coming years, as television programming and audiences continue to fragment. On TV, the NFL is king.”
This morning (9/15/14) Joe Scarborough, never one for impulse control, lashed out at NYT columnist Alan Schwarz for his mention of the failure of broadcasters to acknowledge their own complicity in the shameful collaboration among the NFL, sponsors and the networks who charge them for their ads.
It’s like the story of the nail and the horse and the war*: Sponsors pay the networks, networks pay the NFL, the NFL divides the revenue among the teams and the owners combine these huge paydays with their ticket sales.
The auction was a sign of the NFL’s huge leverage over television networks, which are increasingly looking to the NFL to help fortify them against the rise of online video services, the stagnation of pay TV and other threats. “It’s almost like the networks are afraid to say no to the NFL,” says one senior TV executive involved in the bidding process for Thursday night games.
So. If the NFL is king and everyone, especially the TV networks who profit from ad revenue, ratings and football programming in general, are enablers then we have to make it scarier to continue than to take a stand. That means finding, and boycotting, NFL sponsors and letting the network brass know what we’re doing. (I boycotted Greece for years during the Junta years. Then an Amnesty International leader told me “If they don’t know why you’re not coming, it doesn’t do any good. You need to write to them and tell them why you’re not there.“)
That’s the other part of it. We need to be noisy and bold and brassy and (forgive me Ms. Sandburg) bossy about this – holler like hell in support of our sisters and put our money where our mouths are. Nobody needs any of the stuff that advertise on NFL games and there are alternatives for all of them anyway.
Women’s bodies should not be paying for the bad business planning of television networks; if they won’t take a stand with the NFL, let them find another way to make their money!
Here are a few major #NFLsponsors — MAKE SURE TO LET THEM KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WHY:
This film, Doubt, is exceptional. Smart, funny, moving, intricate and remarkably well-acted, it is, without exception, a remarkable accomplishment. I grew up in Pittsburgh and nuns like Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier were a staple in my life, not in Catholic school, but every weekend, at speech tournaments at Greensburg Catholic or Central Catholic or other parochial schools that so often hosted the competitions.
God help you if one of your judges was one of these sisters. They were the toughest and the scariest. Even in the cafeteria between Round 2 and Round 3, they wandered with the same “eyes in the backs of their heads” that Sister Aloysius demonstrates to her young protege. The teams they coached were the amazing. Practiced, smart, disciplined and resourceful, they did the sisters proud.
As I watched Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic elementary school where accusation and suspicion take over, all the memories of those scary Saturday mornings at the front of a classroom, giving speeches on labor unions or disarmament or the dangers of the Soviet Union came tumbling back. The nerves were unavoidable; when the sisters were among your judges, you had to be prepared, organized, well-spoken and committed. Or else.
Probably the familiarity of those nuns (weird for a nice Jewish girl to have access to, I suppose) and the memory of all the Sundays I went to Mass with friends after a sleep-over added to the film’s impact. I know I had a very personal reaction. But whether you grew up in Idaho, Arizona or the Bronx, the film is irresistible and won’t leave you alone just because it’s not on the screen any longer. I’m not going to talk about the plot because that will diminish the pleasure of watching it unfold, but if you respect great writing, great acting and excellence in film-making, you don’t want to miss this one.
Nobody can stop talking about the NFL. Me neither. Yesterday I wrote about the complicity of broadcast networks and sponsors (who by the way paid my salary for more than 25 years) in this issue of women’s and children’s safety. I’ve never seen so many tone-deaf people in my life. Even CoverGirl can’t seem to get it right.