CNBC - broadcast rights issues

Never come across this before, but then I've never been an avid viewer of CNBC (and I don't know how many people on here are). I Just happened to be channel hopping and found a CNBC branded caption saying "We are unable to show this footage due to broadcast rights issues" - it was during a report on the Olympic Games and the death of the Georgian luge athlete which was part of the NBC Nightly news.

I guess this is because NBC only have rights to broadcast footage (pre rec'd or live) of the Olympics in America only?

I watch the NBC Nightly News quite frequently and this happens occasionally, usually when sports images are involved, so I'm guessing it's something to do with rights.

It's the same for every Olympics.

The Olympics rights holders for each country - BBC, NBC etc. don't want their rivals to show clips of Olympic events. This includes international channels like CNN, BBC World, AlJazeera, Russia Today, CNBC.... none of them can show footage of any Olympic event. There are ways around it of course - stills of events are available and for opening ceremonies channels will send their reporters to stand outside.

The likes of the BBC and NBC have it especially difficult - their domestic services can show Olympic events but their international ones can't (IIRC AJ had the same problem for Beijing - their sport channel having the rights but their news channels not). Hence the blocking of the report on CNBC and the different coverage you'll see overnight on BBC News

The Luge accident might be an exception though, I've just seen footage of it on CNN International. Maybe it's been released under 'news access' rules

Sky News didn't show it themselves (they just showed stills) but it was included in CBS News shown on Sky News.

It gets very complicated internationally - as different countries have different rights holders AND will have different news access agreements in place with local competitors AND different rights laws covering fair dealing coverage.

In the UK, BBC, Sky, ITV and C4 have a news access agreement which mutually benefits all concerned and covers most non-PPV events, and dictates how much, how often and what events can be recorded off-air and shown on rival networks (the off-air recording issue is only occasionally waved - and intentionally masking a channel logo is definitely an issue - though if it is lost through ARCing this appears to be less contentious).

However this is only a local UK agreement - and doesn't cover BBC World News for instance.

The Olympics are VERY protective of their Intellectual Property - both their coverage AND their logos and brands (particularly the Olympic rings) - and I guess CNBC are very aware of this...

Never really understood this.

I can understand them blocking the entire event, but blocking just for a news clip.

Get real broadcasting organisations.

If CNBC asked, and paid for the rights then they could use the clips. The issue is primarily the budgeting of CNBC.

The sport news access rules state that the broadcaster must be captioned even if the logo is on screen throughout... so even if 'Sky Sports' is clearly visable, ITN or the BBC must aston 'Pictures from Sky Sports'

The news access agreement is even more complicated when it comes to sports news channels - Sky News can show footage from the 6 Nations today in one of it's sports bulletis but Sky Sports News can't as it's not a news channel.


Yep, people are very careful as big bills will come your way if you slip up. However it's normally quite easy to avoid Olympics coverage if you're a station without the rights, it doesn't appear on the agencies for example.... unless you purposefully record it off air of course

It does make sense, if you've paid out big money to show something then you don't want to be usurped by a rival showing it.

I'm sure that provisions are made in the case of a big news event occuring at the games, something like yesterday for example

I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but the accident occurred in training, not in the actual Olympics themselves.

This probably makes less sense in this country because of the fact that the BBC are showing as much as possible live, so even if Sky News show a clip of something a minute after it went out on BBC it wouldn't do the BBC too much harm because they will have already shown it and anyone interested in whatever event it was would be watching the BBC and not Sky News anyway. It is more understandable in the US where much of the coverage is being held back by NBC until prime time so a clip shown on Fox News a minute after it happened could be a Fox News exclusive which I am sure NBC wouldn't be too happy about.

I guess that this sad event has transcended from a olympic news story, to a main one. Channel 4 News also replayed the accident. Interestingly British Eurosport also showed it with no warning that it featured the moment of impact - it's such a nasty and unsettling crash, that I'm surprised that no warning was given out beforehand.

Sports broadcast rights are tricky. It's why ESPN America are not allowed to show the US version of SportsCentre news programme - however, I notice they are producing a pan-european (and therefore non rights bothering) version of SportsCentre from March.