Fox converts Super Bowl into Golden Globes
Along about 5 p.m. Sunday, it's likely to come as a surprise to some people that there's actually a football game to be played.
Fox has this year's Super Bowl coverage, and not content to use it as a promotional device for its other series -- a conventional trick every Super Bowl TV network has exploited -- it intends to go whole hog appealing to our increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture.
Evidently Fox believes the cancellation of the Golden Globe Awards by the writers' strike left viewers starving for glimpses of stars on their way to some big event. So Ryan Seacrest, the "American Idol" schillmeister, will play host to red-carpet coverage of stars arriving at, well, wherever the heck it is they'll be arriving at for the game in the Phoenix area, as part of the four-hour pregame show starting at 1 p.m. on WFLD Channel 32.
Fox is quite shameless about it, but then again Fox has been the Shameless Network since it launched 20 years ago.
"Given four hours of pre-game coverage, I fully expect to have a show that will fully cover the Giants and Patriots, giving proper respect to both teams and the historic implications of the Patriots' attempt to achieve an undefeated season," said Fox Sports chairman David Hill. "At the same time, the Super Bowl, with its mass audience, attracts millions of casual fans who are equally interested in the excitement which surrounds the game, as the game itself. We hope to balance both and have something for everyone, and if the criticism on the Monday after goes 50-50, we did our jobs."
Fox doesn't want people pleased, much less ecstatic; they just want them to argue if it was any good.
"It's become a bigger and bigger party," added Fox Sports president Ed Goren on a media conference call this week. "The celebrity status at the Super Bowl is certainly something that is legitimate … and it's logical to try to capture that in our pregame.
"In four hours," he added, "there's plenty of time for everything."
Personally, if I never see another news item or magazine cover featuring Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan and never have to sit through another vacuous red-carpet interview with Branjolina or Tomkat, I'll die happy -- but I'd probably have to die as I write this to accomplish that.
So how appropriate is it that the game's prime focus is golden-boy quarterback Tom Brady, of the surly paparazzi sightings on TMZ with his supermodel girlfriend Giselle Bundchen?
"He's the mega-star that this game trots out there," said lead play-by-play man Joe Buck, easing his way into an actual football discussion. "He kind of crosses over the line there between sports and entertainment. … He's got the smile, he's got the looks, he's got everything."
He left out that he's got the child support, too, but let's remember that the real issue Sunday is whether he gets his fourth championship ring -- and a perfect season.
Buck's color-analyst partner, former Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman, wouldn't be drawn into the debate on whether it was a better story for the Pats to win or lose. "I think they're both great story lines," he said. "I'm just hopeful for a good game."
"I smile when I hear that," Buck chimed in, "because now I know that Troy is one of us. To answer that question that way, Troy is a broadcaster."
Let's just hope they get a chance to broadcast the actual game without interminable shots of celebrities in the crowd.
For those wanting to dodge all the hooey, from Fox News' Super Tuesday political special starting off the day at 8 a.m. Sunday to the overblown introductions immediately before the game, kickoff should be about 5:17 p.m.
Don't tune in before then unless you miss the Golden Globes.
In the air
Remotely interesting: The NFL Network takes up the substantive slack from Fox with a pregame show beginning at 10 a.m. Sunday. Yet it gives way to the game with a special on "Cowboys Cheerleaders" at 4:30 p.m.
Comcast SportsNet Chicago marks Black History Month with a series of vignettes on black athletes throughout February. It will also run the special "Americans in Focus," re-examining Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, as well as Larry Doby, Arthur Ashe and the 1966 Texas Western basketball team, at 6 p.m. Saturday. … ESPN Deportes has Spanish-language coverage of the Caribbean World Series starting with the second-place Dominican team against Venezuela at 2 p.m. Saturday and the first-place Dominican team against Mexico at 6 p.m.
End of the dial: It turns out Tom Waddle and Marc Silverman more than held their own on WMVP 1000-AM against WSCR 670-AM's Mike North in the 9 a.m. hour in the quarterly fall Arbitron ratings book, with a 3.9 percent share of the audience among men 25-54 to North's 2.2. That made it all the more impressive that the Score's Mike Mulligan and Brian Hanley came back to win from 10 to noon, 3.5 to 2.4.
"The Morning Break Radio Show" is sponsoring an outing to the Wolves' game Feb. 9 under the theme "Commit to the Canine." Check out the Web site at morningbreak1240.com or e-mail morningbreak1240@aol.com for details. The show airs weekdays from 10 to noon on WSBC 1240-AM.
-- Ted Cox