NFL 45-second rule

A friend of mine just told me about a newly imposed rule the NFL is enforcing. Here, I've been arguing the silliness of the NFL requiring photographers to wear a bright orange vest with NFL, Canon and one other advertiser on the vest. This is something that in principal I totally disagree with, but in practice see why media is accepting the rule in order to shoot the games, and the logos aren't that big.

The new rule is the 45-second rule. This story by the Wall Street Journal, and this story by The Poynter Institute bring to light the rule. Paraphrasing, the NFL will allow any type of media, including TV and newspapers, to show a total of 45 seconds of online video per day from an NFL event shot on NFL property, not including an interview question by the reporter. With the growing popularity of the internet to distribute video, news organizations have embraced it as a means to show it's readers just who we are talking to and what they have to say.

Our newspapers here at SGVN don't have the immediate opportunity to cover the NFL, but I'm guessing that a limitation of 45 seconds of video would be terrible. We have shot a lot of video lately interviewing high school football players and coaches and I don't think there has been one video that was less than 1:30. We could edit to less than that, but substance is important. Does anybody think that an adequate NFL report can be done in 45 seconds. Maybe wall-to-wall coverage about Michael Vick and O.J. Simpson, with video shot off of NFL property, would suffice.

The Houston Chronicle satarized the 45-second rule. Check out this video.