TV Super Bowl coverage can skip the game
And for all but one local station it does. But the hoopla surrounding the football extravaganza is so pervasive that news organizations have plenty to cover without worrying about the main event.
By ERIC DEGGANS
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 19, 2001
TAMPA -- The commercial is short, snappy and grabs your attention the way most TV news ads do: with movement, exciting music and a focused message.
Footage from past Super Bowl activities dissolves into an image of WFTS-Ch. 28 anchors Martie Tucker and Brendan McLaughlin holding a football, with Raymond James Stadium as a backdrop.
"Experience the Super Bowl," McLaughlin says. "With the team right across the street from the game," adds Tucker, just before the camera whips around to show the ABC affiliate's main studio, just across Himes Avenue.
Of course, viewers can't experience the game itself on WFTS, because it airs on CBS affiliate WTSP-Ch. 10 on Jan. 28.
What they can experience on WFTS -- and every other TV news outlet in the Tampa Bay area -- is a boatload of special reports on everything surrounding the Super Bowl: from concerts to parades, celebrity appearances to ticket giveaways.
All that coverage undoubtedly will pump interest in a contest only WTSP will air, forcing rivals often to refer to the game without telling viewers where to see it.
"The people who want to (see) the Super Bowl can find it," says Jeff Godlis, news director at WFTS, which will air eight Super Bowl specials before game day. "There are so many angles to this event, besides who's playing in the game . . . parties, traffic, ticket scalping, price gouging. This is a huge local story in all of our back yards."
Viewers can expect a flood of boosterish specials, with nearly every local TV station (except WTVT-Ch. 13) giving away Super Bowl tickets, while broadcasting from the NFL Experience minitheme park and prominent parties throughout next week. (Print isn't immune; the St. Petersburg Times will offer a special Super Bowl section every day beginning Sunday).
"Look at it this way: Everyone who lives in the area will be touched by the Super Bowl, whether they're trying to get a restaurant reservation or trying to drive down Dale Mabry," said Elliott Wiser, general manager of Time Warner's Bay News 9. The 24-hour cable newschannel will air live, half-hour Super Bowl specials at 6:30 every night beginning Sunday.
"There's no easy answer, because you just know that, during the game, WTSP will have massive numbers," added Wiser, who has held trivia contests on the newschannel's sports show for months. "They may end up with (half the area's TV audience), but that means the other half won't be watching the Super Bowl."
Among those stations that can't show the game itself, WFTS seems the most aggressive -- anchoring all its newscasts next week from a balcony on a studio overlooking Raymond James Stadium. Fox affiliate WTVT-Ch. 13 offers a more measured approach, with specials and extended coverage planned this weekend and next.
NBC affiliate WFLA-Ch. 8 will delay The Tonight Show with Jay Leno 15 minutes every night next week to make room for an expanded newscast.
"We'll have a cast of thousands involved in covering the game and all the hype surrounding it," says WFLA's acting news director, Deb Halpern. The station will offer an hourlong special Jan. 26 and has sponsored a celebrity golf tournament featuring sportscaster J.P. Peterson. "It's like covering a hurricane . . . the biggest challenge is making sure all the angles are covered."
Even the station that's airing the Super Bowl probably will devote far more pregame attention to the hoopla than to the game itself.
This weekend, WTSP begins anchoring all its newscasts from a 1,200-square-foot space at the NFL Experience, built in Orlando and assembled at the site Thursday. (Though they didn't provide a total cost, executives say the fiber optic lines alone cost $20,000.)
To help keep tabs on non-Super Bowl news, WTSP owner Gannett Co. is providing nine staffers from its other stations to beef up personnel. (On Monday, WTSP and the St. Petersburg Times begin showcasing each other's news and features under a new partnership.)
Viewers get a peek at WTSP's new set during a special at 8 tonight; six more are planned next week. That doesn't include game day, when WTSP will have an 11 a.m. pregame special and an extended news broadcast following the postgame premiere of CBS's blockbuster Survivor sequel.
And, in all that coverage, news director Jim Church says, WTSP won't spend much time dissecting details about the New York Giants or the Baltimore Ravens.
"Are we going to spend our time reporting on football players that the majority of our viewers don't really know?" he adds. "Our focus is what's going to happen in our back yard."
A sample of that focus came Monday, when WTSP pre-empted the sitcom Yes, Dear for 10 News Special Reports: Super Bowl Central, a half-hour pep rally that outlined everything from the stadium's new sod to the hotels where players will stay.
But sports director Al Keck, who's leaving the station in March, got only about five minutes to talk about the game.
Contrast that to WFTS' Monday special, Experience the Super Bowl: Countdown to Kickoff, a half-hour preview that allowed sports guys Jay Crawford and Mark Olesh to deconstruct each team's strengths and weaknesses, recap the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' failed Super Bowl hopes and predict how the game will turn out. (To be fair, it also had the sod and hotel stories.)
Welcome to the land of Super Bowl irony: where the station that won't air the game spends more time talking athletics than the station that does.
Because TV can't help cheerleading, expect lots of breathless comments on how spectacular, glamorous and momentous this will be for the Tampa Bay area. Maybe when the dust clears, someone will investigate whether the game really brought in the $250-million in revenues everybody keeps talking about.
And when it all comes to a head during CBS's 61/2-hour pregame show Jan. 28, some viewers may appreciate the strategy of WTVT, which will follow expanded pregame coverage and Fox Sports' College All-Star Skills Challenge with the Richard Gere/Jodie Foster romantic drama Sommersby.
"It's for those who've had enough of the Super Bowl thing," says WTVT's director of programming and research Brian Fields. "Sometimes, you've got to offer an alternative." |
