Archive: Opinions

The Super Bowl is a genius piece of marketing.  Not content with the football fan market, the organizers tapped two other major target markets: people who love popular music and people who love commercials.  If your brain exploded when I said people like commercials, these Super Bowl geniuses actually created a context in which people actually do watch for the commercials alone if they are not enamored of padded men jumping on each other and chasing a ball or super-star pop singers dressing in glittery costumes, singing (lip synching?) and dancing.  This year the story is Beyonce's allegedly anti-law enforcement performance.

The black berets and the X formation were taken by many as symbolic of the Black Panthers and Malcom X in a generally anti-police -- and some charged racist -- statement.  That was the backlash against an art piece that is also seen as a protest against violence against people of one race, a laudable sentiment.  This Tuesday there was some backlash against Rutherford, Tennessee County Sheriff Robert Arnold, when he said that five to seven law enforcement officers across the U.S. had been lost since Beyonce's Super Bowl appearance just over a week earlier, possibly as a result of the controversial performance.  He was viewed by some as racist while he exclaims he only meant to lament violence against law enforcement officers.  So here we have two polarized interpretations of an art piece that are arguably misunderstood for political reasons.  The Beyonce performance has taken on a life of its own and earned itself a place in the Super Bowl Hall of Buzz right next to Left Shark and Jackson's 'costume malfunction'.

Every year there is an after-flap.  Remember the 2004 half-time show in which Janet Jackson added 'wardrobe malfunction' to the American lexicon?  Of course you do.  But do you remember the top news stories of 2004?  While we do still talk about some of them, I am willing to bet more people talk about Janet Jackson flashing the football crowd than talk about the Bush-Kerry election, the Abu Ghraib scandals, or the hurricanes and a tsunami that ravished the planet.

It wasn't that long ago when the then owner of GoDaddy (the Internet domain name company) made hay from the fact that he had submitted several (sexually) provocative commercials that were rejected by the Super Bowl until one was finally tame enough to be accepted.  He boasted about the commercials on his Web site.  I seem to remember that he displayed them on his site -- I may be wrong about that.  My first reaction was 'Why bother?'  My second was 'Well, they do say that all publicity, even bad publicity, is good publicity.'  Then I thought, 'This is a tasteless publicity stunt and if the Super Bowl people weren't so hot for the cash they should have just said you can't advertise on our football game at all after the first submission'  -- in other words it appeared that the Super Bowl people liked the publicity, too, even though it was tasteless.  It was one of the reasons I moved my business elsewhere.  Not the main reason, but up there.

Yeah, I'm not a sports guy, so maybe I am way off base (see how I used a sports metaphor?) expecting good taste, but I've heard sports is supposed to be about hard work, playing well with others and good sportsmanship, which are things I rank in the best of taste.  So my thought is, 'doesn't the Super Bowl committee review these acts before they are broadcast?  Jackson's costume malfunction couldn't have been predicted.  But devisive cultural and political outrage at the Beyonce dance shouldn't have been hard to predict.  Not that her message isn't important.  It is.  And the message about violence against police is also important.  You just have to wonder how cynical you have to be to make a football game the platform for this discussion.  Is it about the issues, or is it about the money?

This stuff is satisfying to millions of people.  111.9 million U.S. viewers, to be exact.  Although, if you go by statistics, racially defined political statements aren't as compelling as dancing sharks.  Last year's viewership was a record high of 114.4 million U.S. viewers.

I have often said that television (and a newspaper) is not what it seems.  Viewers see it as an entertainment portal.  And it is.  But the business of television, the actual reason it exists is, like all businesses, to make money.  The more buzz, the more outrage, the more enthusiasm, the more viewers, and that translates into larger fees for advertisements.  People want to see that GoDaddy ad, just as watching a train wreck is horrifying and alluring at the same time.  They loved falling in love with that lovable dancing shark.  And they love the controversy surrounding the Beyonce song.

The numbers show it.  A 30 second ad this year went for $5 million.  That's half a million more than last year, so that shark really helped when setting the prices for 2016.  CBS got over $350 million in ad revenue for the game.  Reportedly the music acts didn't get paid for the performance, but they benefit in huge bumps in their record sales.  After that shark dance Katy Perry's album sales leaped 211%.  Madona got a 591% bump in sales after her 2012 Super Bowl performance.  The NFL generated $12.4 billion this season.  The flagship Super Bowl game contributes to that.  And that is just a fraction of the cash the Super Bowl generates.

And football?  Tell me again, what teams played this year?

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