Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Morning Buzz

NBC's New "SNF" Open To Feature User-Generated Videos

NBC will use an “SNF” opening this season that has been reimagined for ‘20. Carrie Underwood still stars in it and sings “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” for an eighth straight season. However, NBC this year produced an open that will feature user-generated fan videos alongside images of NFL stars lip-synching parts of the opening song. “We had to pivot and think about what is going to make sense in 2020,” said “SNF” Exec Producer Fred Gaudelli. “What is going to be authentic? What’s going to feel like this could be happening right now?”

Gaudelli and “SNF” Creative Dir Tripp Dixon came up with the idea of user-generated content after watching ESPN produce the NFL Draft remotely, incorporating fans into the telecast. NBC worked with the league to get all 17 teams on the “SNF” schedule to ask select season-ticket holders to submit videos where they show the passion for their team. “All we said was, put on a piece of team gear and express your fandom,” Gaudelli said. “It was a way to keep the fans involved. We couldn’t have Carrie in a stadium in front of thousands of people this year and be authentic. This is a way around that.”

One of the user-generated videos will be a young Chiefs fan wearing a Patrick Mahomes jersey and sporting a similar haircut to the Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Another Chiefs fan -- also wearing a Mahomes jersey -- dances with “a plunger going through his head -- why, I’m not sure,” Gaudelli said. A Packers fan is wearing a Packers suit and tie and, of course, a cheesehead. A 49ers video was shot from a backyard barbecue. “People’s creative juices got fired up,” Gaudelli said.

The new open, which will be ready for the first “SNF” game Sept. 13 featuring Cowboys-Rams, was shot in Nashville July 24-25. “Normally, we’d shoot this in June and we’d have all of July and August to put this together,” Gaudelli. “There’s no production going on in Los Angeles, so we delayed the shoot until July.”

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Morning-Buzz/2020/08/26/SNF.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Morning-Buzz/2020/08/26/SNF.aspx

CLOSE