Thursday, August 4, 2011

NFL Network Is Killing NFL Films

If you watched the Ed Sabol special and loved every minute of it, as I did, then be warned: this story is going to make you absolutely sick.

Apparently, the NFL Network is sucking the creative life blood out of the once brilliant NFL Films.

Here's a key graph:
"People are afraid to leave because they don't know what they're going to do, but they're also afraid of what's happening right before their eyes," said former Films vice president Phil Tuckett, who spent 36 years with the company before resigning in 2007. 
"They're destroying that company. It's a cold-blooded killing. Bornstein and Katz are just cold-eyed network killers. They don't care about what we represented. With every action spoken and unspoken since they got there, they've said, 'We're in charge now. We don't want to hear this nonsense anymore about the topcoat-maker making home movies of his kid.' 
"Their approach is how much cheap crap can you turn out as quickly as possible so we can stick it on this godawful network that we've created.' "
Great.

In short, the NFL Network, which still does not penetrate every cable outlet in America (Time Warner is a huge hold-out) and whose chief executive commands a staggering $8 million a year, has precipitated an NFL Films workforce reduction of over 80 hard working producers and editors and turned the company from a fine 5-Star Chef into a short order cook.



Excuse me. I need to go punch a wall, or throw up in my mouth.

8 comments:

  1. Now that I have composed myself...

    This is sad news, Czabe.

    A double whammy coupled with the Steve Sabol health situation.

    We got an 8 mm projector in 1966 and among the first films I got were NFL HIGHLIGHTS from 1965.

    I've been hooked on NFL films ever since.

    I still have the MUSIC OF NFL FILMS on VINYL for crissakes (even though I have since acquired the CD set).

    A pox on Bornstein and Katz.

    What part of

    "If it ain't broke, don't fix"

    do you two not grasp!?

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  2. I'm going to be a hater.

    NFL Films had its time. Not every game in the '60s and '70s was covered by the networks as it is now. Highlights now will live on forever and we have five different angles from which to choose from... all in glorious hi-def.

    Competer geekwads can now use their home computer-ma-jobs to splice video, add sound, and so forth.

    Everything I know about my 1960s Green Bay Packers came from watching the same NFL Films VHS tape over and over as a kid. I owe my depth of understanding for my favorite franchise's history to the Sabol family.

    But, with the days of YouiTuneFaceTwit, the internet never forgets. It might be time to take this once magnificent race horse out to the glue factory.

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  3. You can slice and dice clips all you want at home, but it takes professionals to put out the stuff that NFL Films once did.

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  4. "Competer geekwads can now use their home computer-ma-jobs to splice video, add sound, and so forth."

    Ridiculous!

    Owning iMovie or Final Cut doesn't make you NFL Films any more than owning a saw makes you a carpenter or owning a scalpel makes you a surgeon.

    What an insult to NFL Films.

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  5. "Their approach is how much cheap crap can you turn out as quickly as possible so we can stick it on this godawful network that we've created.' "

    That about sums up my opinion of the NFL Network.

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  6. Bornstein & Katz? I hate it when the Catholics destroy a medium.

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