NAB and Streaming Innovation Alliance Argue About Thanksgiving TV
The Streaming Innovation Alliance and NAB went back and forth over sports rights in dueling online posts last week. In a blog post Monday, NAB said Thanksgiving TV traditions such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and NFL games are threatened by tech companies. “As Big Tech giants try to rewrite the rules of media, they are pulling cherished cultural moments off the public airwaves and locking them behind digital paywalls,” the broadcast group said. The FCC should roll back broadcast-ownership rules to prevent “the very events that once brought us together” from becoming “increasingly fragmented across streaming platforms like Amazon, Netflix and Apple.”
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In a post Friday on X, the Streaming Innovation Alliance fired back. "We ought to be able to have an honest debate about the ways streaming has impacted sports without needless distortion, misstatement, or spin.” National sports leagues and many local sporting events that are never shown on broadcast TV are on streaming, the trade group said. “This may not be the national programming that NAB apparently cares the most about, but these events are happening throughout every state in the country and are meaningful.”