By Joe Reedy
Saturday night's game between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers already carried significance as the first NFL game to be exclusively streamed on Peacock.
The matchup will also feature another milestone as NBC and the NFL announced Thursday morning that the fourth quarter will be commercial free for the first time.
NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game which should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.
Rob Hyland, the coordinating producer for NBC's "Sunday Night Football," said there have been discussions about this game since June about how to make it unique and distinct from a regular NBC broadcast.
"The limited stoppages are exciting for me as someone that wants to tell the story of the game and have the time to do it," he said.
During one of the two breaks of 2 minutes, 20 seconds, in the fourth quarter, the announce team of Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth and Melissa Stark will delve more into some of the game's storylines. The other will go to the "Football Night in America" studio team for their thoughts on the game as well as the upcoming slate of games for the remainder of Week 16.
Hyland is used to producing events with limited or no commercial breaks as one of the lead producers for NBC's Olympics coverage in prime time.
The commercial-free quarter will be sponsored by Capital One, Hyundai and Walmart.
Saturday's game on Peacock will be preceded by the matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers on NBC, which should help deliver a better lead-in audience.
That will be the same case on Jan. 13, when NBC will carry the afternoon wild-card playoff game and Peacock will have the night game.
Games on Peacock will be broadcast on the NBC affiliates in the two team markets, which is the same case for games on Amazon Prime Video.
NBC and Peacock haven't tried to set any ratings predictions, but it is worth noting that the "Thursday Night Football" package on Amazon is averaging 12.07 million viewers this season, a 26% increase over last year.
Last Thursday's game between the Chargers and Raiders, where Las Vegas had a 42-0 lead at halftime en route to a 63-21 victory, averaged 7.98 million.
Joe Reedy is an AP sports writer
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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