Super Bowl Game & Halftime Show Sets Ratings Record

Super Bowl Game & Halftime Show Sets Ratings Record

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Peak audience, which was over one hundred and thirty five
million people, and over one hundred and thirty three million
people watched the super Bowl halftime show, which broke that
record too, beating Michael Jackson's halftime show.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Right, how about that?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
And Michael Jackson was kind of the tone center right
Like before him, it was just kind of marching bands
coming in and out of the halftime. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I mean, I think there were people that performed, but
he was the first guy that really kind of made
it a huge production. It wasn't just like somebody standing
on stage, you know, just doing some songs. It was like, oh,
we could do this with the halftime show, and it
just kind of ballooned from there with Kendrick Lamar him
and this game that I thought nobody would be real

(00:40):
interested in because of the teams involved, turned out to
be the biggest one of all times.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
So what the heck? Do I know? I know, right,
neither of us watched it. They didn't need it.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
It was yeah, exactly, It's just like this is the
I literally have not been less interested in the super
Bowl than I was this year. And sure enough, sure enough,
it was the most watched everything including Kendrick Lamar, which
I cannot believe.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Does that make you feel clued out of the court
of public opinion? Like, yes, the game itself, yeah, I
was just I was completely disinterested in the game itself. Yeah,
but that's just it, right. Like we talked about this
on Monday, Why does the NFL keep showing Taylor Swift.
They're not clowning us, they're not trolling us. There's clearly
a reason why would this game be so fascinating. I

(01:28):
think that we were the same where, you know, if
it's Cavs and Warriors year after a year, we get
less interested each time it happens. Maybe that's different for
the general public. Yeah, And that's the thing too.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
I think everybody kind of has that moment where they're
just like, oh man, I'm old now, aren't I? And
the answer to that question is yes, yes, At some
point we do feel like, oh, yes, I am I
am old. I have a disconnect with society. This is
not good. I don't understand this music. I don't I

(02:02):
feel in the way I don't look as a football fan.
You were never gonna talk me into wanting to watch
that game because I don't like either of those teams
I don't even like. I don't find either of them
particularly exciting. The Chiefs are certainly not the high wire
act they were four or five years ago. They were
winning a lot more with defense. And that's not to
say that it's wrong. It's just to say they're not

(02:22):
a new team. I've seen it before and I'm done
with it. The Eagles are also just a generally not
fun to watch team for me, and I like Saquon Barkley,
but I was gonna sit there and watch Jalen Hurts
and it being a blowout or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
That's not what the conversation is. It was just like,
you were never gonna get me to watch that in
the halftime show. If it would have been The Killers
or something like somebody I really liked, I would have
tuned in for that. What were they gonna do for that?
That's a great moment for them. It was Kendrick Lamar,
who I don't have a lot of attachment to. I
know he's popular, he won a ton of Grammys and
all that stuff, but it wasn't something for me. I
cannot believe this was more watch than any of the

(02:59):
previous half time time shows. It's crazy to me and
I am. I had the list in front of me
of all the different halftime shows, and Michael Jackson really
was the first one that kind of changed things. The
year before that, in nineteen ninety two was Glory Estefan
with Olympic figure skaters Brian Boyitano and Dorothy Hammill, members

(03:21):
of the US hockey team from nineteen eighty a decade later,
and the University of Minnesota marching band. So yes, there
were a lot of those kind of marching band and
New Kids on the Block did the nineteen ninety one
halftime show, but it was a tribute to twenty five
years of the Super Bowl and it was with a
ton of Disney characters there, which again you're just kind
of like, uh, it doesn't that doesn't age well based

(03:44):
on what we know of the super Bowl halftime show
to be now. I mean, if you just go back
even into the eighties, the nineteen eighty nine Super Bowl
halftime show was a nineteen fifties rock and roll like
tribute in eighty nine with Elvis Presto, which is basically
an Elvis impersonator, and a bunch of dancers and performers
and they did a bunch of fifty songs, all of.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
The tracks though, if you think about it, So the
NFL discovered the algorithm, they discovered the thing that launched
them into how they were gonna do it with Michael.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Jackson kind of.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
But then I look at this and again hold that thought,
because they still had a bunch of missteps after this.
In ninety four, it was Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt,
and the juds. So it was just like we've seen
at times shows like this since where you have multiple
people kind of performing together. But I mean, this is
like a true like country thing, right, Like, sorry, I'm

(04:40):
not sure, I'm not sure I'm tracking with that. And
then the next year, Patty LaBelle did an Indiana Jones
and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, like this was
a it was an Indiana Jones themed halftime show in
ninety five, So.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
They had to make the mistake again, and then they
had to return to the original formula that they succeeded
with with Michael Jackson, which very clearly again the Michael
Jackson formula that they discovered then, but then they strayed
away from it, and then they went back to it
and probably yielded the good results again that they saw
for this Super Bowl certainly was you get people who
are interested in the game because they love football. They're

(05:14):
going to be there regardless, and when the halftime show's
going on and they're not into it, we've heard people
grumbling about it, But did they turn off the game? No,
they got up and they and like the guy who
called in a couple of days ago, he muted it
and he went and.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Got snacks or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, So the halftime act wasn't like you're jam Maybe
you're more into a country and Western. That's fine, but
you know you're there for the game. Then there are
those crossover of many people who don't really care that
much about the game, but they're really interested in seeing
the production because you're never going to see this artist
that you really like in this sphere, in this big

(05:47):
of a stage, performing in this way, and so that's
where the crossover appeal happens. It happened with Michael Jackson.
I was looking into that Michael Jackson performance, how he
started the thing off. He had like this, He just
was frozen there for like two minutes.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
And he was on the top of the stadium, that
was in the Rose Bowl, wasn't it, Like, I mean,
that's how was that Bill's Cowboys? Uh yeah yeah, Bill's
Cowboys in the Rose Bowl? Yeah yeah. And that whole
thing is on YouTube. You can go back and watch it.
It's almost it's it's pretty interesting to kind of like
in a time machine, like go see what this was.
That one was so important because of how popular he was,

(06:21):
and this is after his peak, the peak of his powers.
This is what like Taylor Swift is going to try
to do, right, Like she's the peak of her powers
right now. She comes back in like six years where
she's kind of on the decline. She's about forty years
old at that point, and she's got all this music
that people are just like actually a little bit nostalgic
for that. I think that is going to do like

(06:41):
some insane numbers, and I think that's why she's waiting
instant of peak powers, like right on the edge of
your relevance. Now, Michael Jackson was still very relevant, but
he wasn't like the biggest pop star in the world
in the early nineties. He was one of many, but
he wasn't the biggest one like he was in the
mid eighties, but they caught him at like the perfect
time to like recast that star into the sky. And

(07:03):
the songs that he did. He did jam Billy Jean,
Black or White, We Are the World, and Heal the World.
He did five songs and it was the production and
people were like losing their minds over it. Now he
did eleven songs. Kendrick did in like a thirteen minute show.
It's too many. I also this case study is going
to be crazy. In ninety seven, it was the Blues

(07:24):
Brothers Bash and it was the Blues Brothers with guests
Zz Top, James Brown, and Catherine Cryer did a news
intro at the beginning of it.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
I bet you a lot of people complained after Michael
Jackson because they're football fans and they didn't connect with
the music, and so maybe that's why they strayed away
from the formula there for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Gloria Stefon did it again in ninety nine with Stevie Wonder,
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Saveon Glover. But I just
think that I think that the NFL has found the
perfect formula. You make the halftime act someone who has
this pop appeal. That's going to draw people in who
are there for the snacks in the park, but not
the game you make. So then the people who were
there for the game, who maybe they loved the food fighters,

(08:05):
or they love Travis Tritt, or they loved you know,
Zach Brown or wherever, they're not going to turn off
the game.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well, I'm going to tell you this.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
The two thousand and one Disney did the production and
Christina Aguilera, Rodrique, Iglesias, Tony Braxton, Phil Collins in a
six or an eighty person choir from the Georgia State
University were there. It wasn't until two thousand and one.
I think they finally were like, oh, we got it now.
MTV was the producer in two thousand and one and

(08:36):
it was Aerosmith and in Sync, and I think that
changed the game. Then you two did the two thousand
and two to one, and that was a huge deal.
When they started that with Beautiful Day, I remember that
that was you know what, Yeah, that was a good one.
But that was after September eleventh, correct, Yeah, that was.
And then they had they had the names that was
I mean tears in the eyes kind of stuff right there.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, they played three songs. Wow? Did three full songs? Wow?

Speaker 3 (09:03):
I mean that tracks because their songs are kind of longer.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
But they didn't screw around, they didn't try to just
hit a bunch of their hits. They played three songs
and just killed it on the stage.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
They did.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
And you know what happened. People are like, now that's
a halftime show. Now, it's just like, how many can
we just smash together?

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Here? Two thousand and three Shania Twain and no doubt.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
But think about after the after Kendrick's performance, which set
records for most viewed performance, and what else has happened.
There's been all these easter eggs that people have been
talking about. There's all these moments, whether it's Serena Williams
or you know, moments in the crowd that people have
caught that are Now that's what it's all about. There's
this sort of like media over top media, over top

(09:45):
media that overlaps into social media that we consume as
a much larger product now. And so I mean, I
think it's undeniable that what happened this past Sunday is
going to try to be replicated as many times as
they can.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well and we're kind of getting back into and I'll
leave this conversation on this. The two thousand and four
super Bowl halftime show was the super Bowl halftime show
that changed super Bowl halftime shows forever in other ways.
That was MTV returning to produce, and they invited p Diddy, Nelly, Kid, Rock,
Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake, and Janet Jackson and they did
basically a dozen songs between the six of them, and

(10:19):
of course it ended with Justin Timberlake doing a wardrobe malfunction,
if you will, forcibly, wardrobe malfunctioning Janet Jackson's top and
it went nuts, right, and everybody's talking about it. That
was the last we saw of MTV doing this these
halftime shows. They went to more of a conservative older
that's the Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, Prince Tom Petty, Bruce

(10:42):
Springsteen kind of group. And then eventually we've kind of
evolved into this, let's get a current big star or two,
or in the case of a few years ago, five
great rappers to celebrate Los Angeles. But it's interesting because
like the first, like you said, the first like twenty
five super Bowls were really just marching bands with maybe

(11:04):
like a person or two people or Disney characters wandering
around like it really wasn't that big of a deal.
And then that Michael Jackson one kind of changed how
the NFL was like, Hey, we can actually make this
like quite a show if we do this right. And
they had a lot of missteps on the way and
a big journey, and we may not align with the
music that much. I can't tell you the last time
I was like excited for a halftime show. But that's

(11:26):
because I'm a football guy, and like you said, they
don't need me for me to be still watching there
for that fifteen minutes, Like that's for other people that
otherwise wouldn't be interested in the actual game, So I
get it.