Super Sunday
The Super Bowl is a bona fide TV phenomenon, if not always a classic game. Some of the most-watched broadcasts in TV history are Super Bowl telecasts, even among those viewers who don’t know three-down football from four.
The sizable audience is in part because of the curiosity factor — who’s going to win, and will there be a wardrobe malfunction? — and in part because the Super Bowl has, in recent years anyway, become the testing ground for new camera technology and breakthroughs in visual effects. Some viewers watch for the ads, though many of the ads seen in the U.S. won’t be shown in Canada. (CTV’s signal will co-opt host broadcaster Fox across the country.)
Early signs suggest this year’s batch of Super Bowl ads, which cost $4 million for a 30-second spot, will be more mature and dignified than in past years, with shock-for-shock’s-sake and sophomoric humour taking a back seat to celebrity endorsements from unlikely celebs — race-car driver Danica Patrick and Stephen Colbert — and a more global, international reach.
The technology driving the broadcast has advanced dramatically in the past year. Fox Sports president and Super Bowl executive-producer Eric Shanks wouldn’t divulge details when he faced reporters last month at the winter meeting of the TV Critics Association, but he filled in some of the broad strokes.
“There’s always something,” Shanks said. “Even though you know the Super Bowl is coming every year, things still sneak up on you. We have a few things up our sleeve that are going to bring fans closer to the game.
“We want to show things you can’t see, like the wind. You’ll be able to see, with a degree of accuracy, what the win dis doing to a quarter back or the field goal kicker.”
A post-Super Bowl programming note: Fox will follow the game with a special, one-off episode of its Golden Globe-winning comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with guest appearances by Fred Armisen and Joe Theismann, at 9 p.m. It also airs on City at 11:30 p.m.
CTV, meanwhile, will follow its Super Bowl broadcast with a special instalment of Master Chef Canada, at 8p.m. (Kickoff: Fox, CTV — 4:30 p.m.)