"Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will play the half-time slot at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, snagging the most-watched musical showcase of the year, according to the organizers." [Reuters]
NBC isn't just cashing in on the ad dollars from the Olympics and the upcoming Super Bowl — it's cashing in on all the free publicity big numbers get from the media. Back when it sold $1 billion worth of Olympics television time, the trade press fell over itself to trumpet the numbers as the Second Coming. (We were right there with 'em.) Then NBC sold a few more measly million dollars worth of ad time, and again everybody was quick to cheer them on once more. And it's happening again. Now that NBC has the Super Bowl, it's hiked the 30-second fees, from the $2.7 million Fox charged last year to a cool $3 million for the 2009 games. And according to the trade press, NBC is selling spots like gangbusters! AdAge was first on the scene, and today the Wall Street Journal reports Anheuser-Busch and PepsiCo are taking a crack at blowing their ad budgets, while General Motors won't be, and FedEx is still making up its mind. But it's less about the enormous fees — at $3 million, advertisers will spend $100,000 per second — than the industry-wide jumping up and down for NBC's ad sales department. Yes, it's pretty amazing to see network television gobble up huge chunks of media spends on single sporting events, especially in this economic climate. But we've said it before and we'll say it again: For every million bucks NBC hauls in to its coffers, it earns a good chuck of publicity on top of that, gratis. Perhaps, though, it's deserved?
Seven hundred years later, the matter of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl nipple may finally be put to rest. And CBS won't be paying for it. A federal appeals court has shot down the FCC's $550,000 fine against the network for its part in Nipplegate, when, during the 2004 football halftime show, Justin Timberlake revealed to 90 million people that Jackson has at least one of something that everybody has two of. The three-judge panel declared the FCC "deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so 'pervasive as to amount to "shock treatment" for the audience.'" Also: That nine-sixteenths of one second of bare breast, despite being TiVo-able and replayed endlessly by horny 13-year-olds, wasn't such a big deal.
Not that you're actually going to search a newsstand for a Boston Herald, but today's front page might actually be of interest — because it's a forced apology to the New England Patriots. [E&P] The entire front page, plus part of the back sports page, is being used to say sorry for the paper's February story, which accused the NFL team of breaking league rules by videotaping the St. Louis Rams' team practices the day before the two faced off in Super Bowl XXXVI.
"While the Boston Herald based its Feb. 2, 2008, report on sources that it believed to be credible, we now know that this report was false, and that no tape of the walkthrough ever existed," reads part of the apology. [BH]
Naturally, the paper's commenters are having a field day. CONTINUED »
From the Dept. of Ridiculous to Us But Makes Sense to Everyone Else, NBC will be charging advertisers $3 million per 30-second spot. That's a hike of 10%, or more than double the usual year-to-year increase; last year, Fox charged $2.7m. More shocking than the sticker price? Advertisers will, naturally, pay up. Last year's game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots drew record ratings, with some 97.4 million people tuning in. Then again, you could buy in bulk! Clients Anheuser-Busch, which buys spots every year, often 10 per game, and years in advance, gets the discount rate of just $2 million per spot, or $66,666 per second.
Judging by our coverage of Heath Ledger’s death, clearly we’re not sensitive people. But even we were a little offended by the Salesgenie.com ad during the Super Bowl that featured pandas speaking with Asian accents.
The accents weren't inaccurate; they were just tasteless and unamusing.
The writer of the ad Vinod Gupta, who happens to the CEO of Salesgenie’s parent company, said he would remove the spot due to complaints. But he still defended himself, saying, “The pandas are Chinese. … They don’t speak German.”
That other vaguely offensive for Salesgenie spot featured a salesman named Ramesh with an Indian accent will keep continue to air because there were fewer complaints.
That attitude sort of makes Gupta that Mitt Romney of advertising: He’ll do whatever offends people the least.
Officially, Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of prescription pills. The toxicology report found acute intoxication from of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine.
The closest thing to a punch line we can imagine is that almost all of those substances come up as incorrectly spelled. Also, good timing on that anti-prescription drug commercial during the Super Bowl.
[Photo]
THE BEST $2.7 MILLION SPENT E-Trade's Super Bowl spot, with the talking baby, was the most-watched of any Super Bowl ad, according to TiVo's measurements. Next came Pepsi's Amazon.com ad that showed Justin Timberlake's balls getting busted on a mailbox, followed by Coke's ad showing James Carville and Bill Frist enjoying each others' company. So, clearly, Americans love ads that feature impossible scenarios. [MDN]
EXAGGERATION STATION Okay, the Super Bowl was pretty awesome. It was an incredible game and Eli Manning, a Hoboken resident, gave New Jersey Post-College U. a good name. But still, it’s just a game and the ads were vaguely racists this year. Still, Rupert Murdoch called Super Bowl Sunday "the greatest day ever in the history of our network." Not that the premier of Temptation Island was a better day for Fox, but that claim seems kind of sad. [TVNewser]
SUPER WATCHED This year's Super Bowl, with 93.2 million supposed viewers (they're Nielsen numbers, after all), was not only the big game's most watched broadcast ever; it was the second-most watched TV program ever, with only the 1983 finale of M-A-S-H beating it with 106 million. [AP]
SUPER BOWL'S SUPER EVENTS A run down of Super Bowl parties thrown by media outlets, most of whom have little to nothing to do with football, or sports. Maxim's events chief Jordan Rothstein went upscale instead of themed; ESPN the Magazine welcomed Ludacris and 800 of their nearest and dearest. [BizBash]
For all the stupid Super Bowl ad hype, the one above actually is pretty inspired. And until Eli Manning played superman in the last drive, wasn't even going to air.
Brady was supposed to ride off into the sunset with a Lombardi trophy under one arm and a supermodel under the other. Looks like he'll limp off with Gisele and a whole set of questions for a long offseason.
Andrew Perloff, "An Inconvenient Truth," SI.com
Have you heard? Sunday is the Super Bowl. It’s not a regular bowl game. It’s a super one.
To build hype for the Most Important Sport Event Ever, for the past two weeks we’ve been bombarded with touching locker room pieces and less touching stalkings of Tom Brady and Giselle.
But the real game going on is the advertising game. The Super Bowl really is the Most Important Sport Event Ever, at least in terms of ratings. Consequently, Super Bowl ads this year are going for an average of $2.7 million.
But that’s nothing when you consider all the hype having a Super Bowl ad brings a company. Above is an ad we voluntarily put up for Pepsi. Think about that for a second. We’re putting up an advertisement for a soft drink we don’t even like because we think you, the reader, are interested in it. And somehow you are. We are, too.
For $2.7 million, Pepsi didn’t just buy a captive audience. They bought an adoring one. Anyone want a soda?
• A secret from Jossip HQ: we're obsessed with doing calisthenics between posts. But with this chair, we could calisthenics while writing posts. We'd double our output. Please David!
• From Deadspin: "Being a Patriots fan this season has been like waking up and suddenly discovering your dick is six inches bigger." This is why girls don't follow sports. Also, a sentence like that implies that your dick is only two inches to begin with. CONTINUED »
• Chris Rock is probably the only man in America who can get away with crying about his family's history on national TV.
• Kanye West played the Museum of Natural History. Don't we feel like assholes for watching Jericho instead of going out. CONTINUED »
SUPER FEEDBACK LOOP Super Bowl advertisers are more than happy to show reporters their multi-million dollar 30-second spots. So long as they sign confidentiality agreements and agree to the terms of their press embargoes. Which allows the press to report on marketers creating clever spots, drumming up just enough publicity about the whole charade without spoiling the reason for viewers to tune in, and then replay the spots on YouTube.
THE PEPSI ADS WILL BE BETTER ANYWAY Fox won't be selling ad space to presidential candidates during the Super Bowl. The biggest advertising event of the year is essentially sold out, and Fox doesn't have enough slots to offer equal time to the candidates. Fine, more quick-witted promotions of bad beer for the rest of us. [TVWeek]
What the hell is this thing? Hint: It's not a prop from Cloverfield. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
