The great American Super Bowl
Today on CNN’s Reliable Sources hosted live by Brian Stelter in New York City, Sports Illustrated media reporter Richard Deitsch and ESPN columnist and CNN commentator LZ Ganderson spoke to Brian about the Super Bowl, the most televised event in America. Brian discussed with Deitsch and Ganderson the media’s role in generating Super Bowl hype, the Nielsen statistics on who’s watching, and the event’s prominent advertising campaigns.
Reliable Sources airs Sundays, 11 a.m. to noon (ET).
A transcript of the discussion is available after the jump.
Transcript
STETLER: Welcome back to Reliable Sources.
I probably don’t need to tell you we’re a few hours away from the biggest sports advertising and pop culture event of the year. But most of all it’s a TV show, the last great unifying television event — The Super Bowl of course.
These events used to happen more often, but now instead of having three networks we have hundreds. We all watch our own thing. The question is, is the Super Bowl an American institution because we need one, because we love it or is it being manufactured for us by network hoopla and huge corporate outlays.
Listen to what Fox Sports 1 host Joe Klatt told me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOEL KLATT, ANCHOR, FOX SPORTS 1: The Super Bowl has grown to a point where it’s the one thing in our culture, as Americans, that completely crosses borders. It doesn’t matter if you’re into pop culture, if you’re into sports, if you’re a sports enthusiast, sports fan, if you’re a basketball fan, a football fan, baseball fan, it’s the one thing that everybody watches.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: Here’s why Joel can say that. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on TV every year. The second most popular thing is the Oscars. Forty million American viewers watched that last year. And the Super Bowl, 109 million Americans watched last year.
Those numbers come from Nielsen, and they’re actually incomplete. The numbers are actually higher for the Super Bowl, and I’ll explain why in a moment.
Here to talk about how our favorite extravaganza — how this became our favorite, anyway, are two of the wise men of sports — and other things, of course, Richard Deitsch, the media reporter for Sports Illustrated; and ESPN writer L.Z. Granderson.
Guys, we are a few hours away. I wonder if you think the media — what role the media plays in building this up as a communal event?
GRANDERSON: Well, I mean, it’s been going on ever since we decided who was going to be in the Super Bowl. You immediately start looking at the personalities; you look at the narratives. And obviously the narrative this year is Peyton Manning. You know, will he win his second Super Bowl ring? He’s a likable personality. He’s in all the commercials. He’s the face of the NFL.
When you have a, kind of, superstar that you can build a narrative around, absolutely the media is culpable, if you will, of spreading this around.
But let’s not forget the game is exciting, too. And even if you’re a casual fan, just watching great athletes on the field for even a brief period of time is something that we still enjoy as Americans and it’s an important part of our culture.
STELTER: It might be counterintuitive, Richard, to think about how high these ratings keep getting because it seems like football is besieged by controversies like concussions, and yet the game continues to grow in popularity, on television, at least.
DEITSCH: Well, listen, football — this is our American pastime. It’s religion for a lot of people. The ratings go up because it is the last communal experience that we have. Fox will probably get 111 million, 112 million viewers this year. I think they’ll set a record.
STELTER: And, by the way, Nielsen is only counting people at home. They’re not counting big parties. They’re not counting bars or restaurants.
DEITSCH: Absolutely. They’re not counting bars. It’s…
STELTER: It must be higher.
DEITSCH: The real rating, I would think, is probably around 150 million, 170 million, which, if you think about it…
(CROSSTALK)
STELTER: … everybody awake.
DEITSCH: That’s — yeah, exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
That’s extraordinary. But, you know, to talk about, Brian, why this gets — why this is so big, you’ve got to remember, ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Fox Sports 1 — there are all these other properties that are not even broadcasting the game that are fueling this hype leading up to Sunday.
So whatever the network is that has the Super Bowl, they get the added, built-in, sort of, lead-in from all their other competitors. That’s why…
STELTER: I’m glad you mentioned that. I asked ESPN’s Adam Schefter about that when I visited their giant camp here in…
(LAUGHTER)
… here in New York City. Here’s what he had to say about that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADAM SCHEFTER, NFL ANALYST, ESPN: ESPN helps make the event and the event helps make ESPN, and it’s a marriage of convenience. And I think that’s the idea of any good business relationship, right? Two people helping each other.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: We always talk about the Super Bowl being the corporate bowl, but is it more purely corporate this year, do you think, because it’s in New York City where all the marketers and advertisers are?
GRANDERSON: Well, if you look at the Nielsen ratings, and we’ve already agreed that they aren’t fully complete, but one thing that we do know is that they’ve spiked and they’ve peaked, at least over the last three years, during the halftime act. So the game is not even actually on. It’s been the entertainment at halftime in which they’ve actually drawn the most eyeballs.
And so I think, yes, definitely, you know, corporate America is driving this, but there are still so many other pop culture elements to the Super Bowl that just makes this a touchstone moment for most Americans.
DEITSCH: Yeah, Adam Schefter, by the way, one of 147,000 ESPN employees, by the way, covering this game.
(LAUGHTER)
L.Z. is correct on that in that, you know, it’s — Fox will put out these numbers after the game, but your traditional NFL game may be viewed by 65 percent men, 35 percent women. The Super Bowl is much closer to 54 percent, 55 percent men, 45 percent women. The demographics are good all across the board, from young and old, different races, different genders. Again, it’s just one of these game where you don’t have to be…
STELTER: And why don’t the controversies affect that, you think?
DEITSCH: Because — because football is our passion, and it’s — maybe sometimes it’s a little bit of our, you know, voyeuristic kind of moral problem that we have with the concussions but yet we’re so — we’re so in love with the violence; we’re so in love with the game that I think sometimes we look past knowing that these guys are suffering for us 20, 30 years down the road.
GRANDERSON: They’re also well-compensated.
DEITSCH: That’s fair (ph).
GRANDERSON: And I think, you know, in America, when you know that the guys are informed and they know what they’re getting into and they’re making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to do what they do, it’s really easy as viewers to go, “They know what they’re getting into.”
So even though we see all these — all this information is coming in about concussions, there’s still the fact that they’re still choosing to play this game alleviates — alleviates us as the viewer of the burden of that moral question of why watch it. Well, because they’re comfy (ph) making the choice to do it.
STELTER: You guys are mentioning the advertising, of course. I just refreshed my web browser, seeing what’s the most popular ad before the game even starts. It looks like it’s this Budweiser puppy love ad. Let’s run a clip of it and we’ll talk about it briefly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: Thirty-three million views, at the moment, on YouTube, already, and the game hasn’t started yet.
These ads are not ads anymore. They’re multimedia campaign, aren’t they, Richard?
DEITSCH: Absolutely. You — you know, you set these up or you release them before the game to try to get some momentum. That, actually, ad is great. I think it’s fun. You’ve seen already the Schwarzenegger and Bud Light. They’ve — you know, they’ve, sort of…
STELTER: Will there be any surprises?
(CROSSTALK)
STELTER: Any surprise ads we haven’t seen yet?
GRANDERSON: I’m a little curious to see how this David Beckham H&M campaign — they’ve been really smart on Twitter, trying to encourage people ahead of time to vote “covered” — “#covered,” or “#uncovered.” So I’m really curious to see how this all pans out.
STELTER: So maybe there will be some surprises.
DEITSCH: And I want to see Chrysler. It looks like Chrysler, whether it’s Eminem or Clint Eastwood, they usually get a lot of talk after the game. We’ll see what they did.
STELTER: Cool. A few more hours. Richard, L.Z., thank you for being here.
DEITSCH: Thanks.
GRANDERSON: Thank you.
STELTER: We’re back after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STELTER: We’re all out of time. Thank you for watching this edition of “Reliable Sources,” and I will see you next week.