Wrapping up another compelling season of NFL this year was the Super Bowl last night. A couple weeks ago the commissioner, Roger Goodell, expressed to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, that the intent of the league is to entertain the fans. He said, specifically, "We want them to say 'That was the greatest entertainment I've ever seen.' " And last night, as long as you're not a Patriots fans, you can probably agree.
However, the game is more than just 60 minutes of regulation entertainment. While none of the XLVI showdowns has ever gone into overtime, each has gradually, over decades, consumed more than an hour of the regular viewer's precious Sunday schedule. Kickoff to Hail Mary, last night's game ran about 3 hours 30 minutes (my last check was about 10:00 PM when the game wrapped up, tough to confirm this detail). Not excessively longer than a regular season game which comes in around 3 hours. But the biggest difference may not be in overall game length or even number of viewers glued to their sets during that time. The biggest difference may be the expansive viewership of ancillary programs, the two-weeks of pregame hype and couple days of post-game wrap up programs that come with it. Not to mention all of the other entertaining media (newspapers, magazine, internet) participating in the consumer feeding frenzy.
Listening to XM the other day, I heard the Brit Richard Blade explain that, for listening pleasure, the Super Bowl was going to be broadcast on at least 8 stations with different commentators depending on team preference, nationality, etc. Last week, I see Al Roker flying down a temporary zip line outside Lucas Oil Stadium as he generically forecasted the sunshine in my neck of the woods. And today I get Charlie Rose remembering when he was naive enough to think Madonna really was a virgin (he still does). The impact is everywhere, as is the residual entertainment value.
If anything, it's nice to see that for once, fittingly at the end of the season, the NFL allows 60 Minutes to broadcast at it's regularly scheduled time slot. Airing on a different network than the Manning-Brady duel, 60 Minutes aired a repeat of an Anna Wintour interview. Who? I don't know. But somebody watched since there's the littlest of mention of it on the internet today. Makes you appreciate the small but beneficial effect of the show in the recurring ticking clock, constantly reminding the viewer how much time was left in the show, or conversely how time a viewer still had to commit. Contrary to it's competition last night, the 60 Minutes clock has the viewer's schedule in mind. But in the entertainment business, as can be seen, it seems that it can be much grander and profitable to keep the viewer's schedule open-ended.
