Because showing highlights of the Olympics can be quite the political mess of broadcasting rights and licensing restrictions, ABC News Breakfast decided to circumvent the issue by recreating the women’s 100m hurdles finals with Lego. It’s awesome.
Aussie Sally Pearson beat out Americans Dawn Harper and Kellie Wells for the gold medal. ABC News, which is based in Melbourne, created a dramatic reenactment of the event with Lego bricks to show viewers how the race went down — and it’s riveting stuff! News programs can only show still pictures of the Olympic events because of strict IOC rules regarding highlight packages. From the Hollywood Reporter:
a) Olympic Material may appear in no more than three (3) News Programs per day; and
b) No more than two (2) minutes of Olympic Material may be used in any one News Program; and
c) These News Programs must be separated by a period of at least three (3) hours; and
d) No more than one third of any individual event may be used in any one News Programs or 30 seconds, whichever is the lesser time. However, if the duration of an individual Olympic event is less than 15 seconds the whole of the event can be shown in a News Program.”
Basically, don’t air highlights of the Olympics on TV if you don’t own the rights. [Australia Network News via The Hollywood Reporter]