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..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington



Of all the stories to emerge from Sunday night’s Super Bowl, the one I found most compelling came not from a journalist, but a press release. Not that the game itself wasn’t wonderful – it was – but the Super Bowl no longer is about football. It’s become what every commissioner since, and including, Pete Rozelle always intended it to be: a balls-out celebration of capitalism, American-style.

While the game itself has seen its good and bad years, while the excess surrounding the event has always stunk to high heaven. For all of its XXXVIII years, fans have taken a back seat – if they could afford one at all – to advertisers, scalpers, media executives, politicians and high rollers of all stripe and color. The tickets-only parties have always catered to the rich, famous and overexposed – yes, Paris Hilton was on hand – while the pedestrian mall rallies were reserved for the hoi polloi.

Contrary to NFL myth, the Super Bowl’s popularity has grown, primarily, thanks to Las Vegas odds-makers and thousands of unsung promoters of office pools. Otherwise, it would just be another extremely competitive game, attended by team loyalists with painted faces, and that’s not what the combined forces of the NFL, networks and Wall Street intended.

Which is why I was so amused Monday by this press release from TiVo, as it takes into account almost everything the Super Bowl has come to stand for:

“Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson top the show during Sunday's Super Bowl, attracting almost twice as many viewers as the most thrilling moments on the field, according to an annual measurement of second-by-second viewership in TiVo households.

“The Jackson-Timberlake moment drew the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured. TiVo said viewership spiked up to 180 percent as
hundreds of thousands of households used TiVo's unique capabilities to pause
and replay live television to view the incident again and again.

“Overall, the half-time extravaganza had a powerful grip on viewers. According to TiVo's
analysis of aggregated data from an anonymous sample of 20,000 households,
viewership of the game's intermission increased by 12 percent compared to last
year's halftime show.”

What, you expected TiVo viewership to spike during the Willie Nelson commercial?

I must admit to being so underwhelmed by the half-time show that I not only didn’t see said incident, I also neglected to TiVo it. In fact, I might have switched channels to catch 15 minutes of a Sharon Stone bio on E! I didn’t even know there was a boob-popping scandal until I read about it later on the Drudge site.

While some reports speculated that Janet Jackson was wearing a pasty over her nipple, a TiVo’d close-up proved otherwise: it was a nipple ring in the shape of a star. Unless Ms. Jackson is in the habit of wearing uncomfortable jewelry under her Maidenforms this simple fact told me she had every intention of showing it off, with the help of former boy-toy Justin Timberlake.

Not that I would have objected, in any case. But, I do get a kick out of all the Monday-morning quarterbacks who have expressed shock – shock! – such a thing could happen on broadcast television. Or, that MTV would put its parent company, Viacom, which also owns CBS and Paramount, in such a potentially disastrous trick bag with this notoriously blue-nosed edition of the FCC (which, last month, advocated stiffer penalties for on-air profanity).

Fact is, a blurb on MTV’s own website – since removed – suggested just such a noteworthy event would take place at halftime. The only question became, which of the entertainers would be the one to drop trou, say the F-word or flash their tits. CBS, no stranger to hypocrisy, plugged next weekend’s Grammy broadcast with pictures of Britney in a cat suit and Madonna in black lace, almost certainly insinuating that some girl-girl action could repeat itself (or Britney could marry Madonna for 15 minutes).

With all the reality-based peek-a-boo shows on the air these days – and the stakes so high for network executives -- broadcast television has become a public relations disaster waiting to happen. Premium cable, on the other hand, makes no bones about its need to titillate, if only to afford such fine shows as The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm. One of the reasons BBC-America has grown in popularity is that it assumes viewers are mature enough to handle the occasional boob flash and unrepeatable epithet, while NBC execs continue to pretend they don’t hear all the blowjob jokes on Friends during the family hour.

But what really sealed the deal for me was when the FCC’s resident Nazi, Michael Powell, observed Monday:

“That celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt," Powell said, in a statement, ostensibly echoing other board members’ feelings. "Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better."

Well, that statement could describe every Orange Bowl and Super Bowl half-time show since the Up With People/down-with-hippies era. It could even include several past Oscar song-and-dance numbers, most Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies, and Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.

“Classless,” “crass” and “deplorable” are what America does best.

How else to describe a made-for-TV event that has evolved from a test of strength, speed and wiles, to a contest over which company delivered the best friggin’ commercial? Critics for almost every major publication in America, led by USA Today and AOL, chipped in Monday with their opinions – based on dopey grading systems – on the subject, as if millions of consumers hadn’t already purchased devices designed to forever eliminate the need to watch commercials.

Even the most-clever commercial becomes an irritant after it’s been shown more than twice, let alone 400 times.

I tuned it out of the AOL grease-ball commercial five times, before staying with it long enough to figure out what it was supposed to sell. And, I thought the Budweiser folks missed a no-brainer by not using the donkey from Shrek, instead of a real-life critter. None of the studio ads left me wanting to know more about the pictures they previewed.

The game, though, was terrific. It had real passion, legitimate heroes, true suspense and a Hollywood ending -- sort of like Troy. The outcome was always in doubt, whether you were simply a fan of one or the other team, or had money on the point spread, over-under or any one of three dozen prop bets being offered at Vegas books.

Next week, don’t be surprised if the odds makers put up wagers on the possibility of tittie flashes, girl-girl action and cuss words, and if they’ll occur before or after the Beatles tribute. For next year’s Super Bowl, I’m already getting 2-1 that ABC will bring back Up With People and Anita Bryant.

- by Gary Dretzka

February 3, 2004


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