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Chicago stations blackout sports highlights in live newscast streams


T.L. Hughes

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I'm not sure where to put this thread, but given who I'm discussing in it, I'll throw a bone and put it here. While watching live streams of WGN-TV's newscasts, I've noticed that they have blacked out all but the audio during their sports segments and during their Sunday sports highlight show Instant Replay (though the webmasters at WGN-TV seem to be a little klutzy with what they black out since the message "League Rules Prohibit Livestream" has actually appeared at times during streams of entire newscasts, except for the commercial breaks; and they even blacked out the video during an interview with Ozzie Smith the night after the 2012 MLB All-Star Game because it apparently included highlights from that game, though ironically an interview that Smith conducted on KTLA that same morning aired as is, and the WGN-TV website has the full interview with the video intact on its website). I questioned whether it is because WGN-TV's broadcast rights to the Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls, but the evening of this writing (August 3), I noticed that WLS-TV's newscast live stream blacked out the 6 p.m. sports segment entirely with no background audio (I thought that WLS-TV used to run the sports segments uninterrupted at one point), the oddity is that WLS-TV does not even produce any local sports telecasts in the same vein as WGN-TV.

 

The issue here is that the stations are streaming their newscasts online, which means that anyone around the world can see it, but I question the point in streaming the news and weather segments only to cut out the sports. I'm not sure if this is a local situation, since I know that live streams of newscasts from KTLA, KRON, KFOR and several others retain the sports segments. Is there some sort of crackdown by the sports leagues on local stations streaming sports highlights during live newscasts online that I don't know about?

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It's rights concerns. They may not have the rights to do that. For similar reasons the WatchESPN app sometimes blocks out certain SportsCenter highlights because they do not have the rights to them online but they do have them for TV.

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For the live internet stream of WITI-6's newscast, they don't show any of the sports segments, period. They just cut to the live DOT traffic cam loop instead. That includes if there is a sports report outside of the normal sports segment.

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Olympic broadcast rights are very specific in the contracts with the various networks/stations/etc and have specific rules for rebroadcast. It is for on air TV broadcast only (NOT streaming internet or any other internet rebroadcast) and there is time limit on video footage used per news broadcast (I believe it's only 40 seconds total for most stations) and what video footage can/can't be used. Alot of rules in there.

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  • 3 weeks later...

And on KTUU's 5:00 newscast (the only one that is streamed live), they also keep the sports segment intact.

 

But this fall, I hope they'll finally livestream the Newshour and Late Edition as well, blacking out the commercials with a "Live Stream will Resume Shortly" graphic. Then again, they'd have a problem with the four-hour time difference between Alaska and New York (unless if they prefer watching an hour-long newscast from Anchorage at 10:00 pm online instead of WNYW or WPIX's news).

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