CBS started its Super Bowl 50 marketing blitz just hours after Malcolm Butler intercepted a Russell Wilson pass to seal a Super Bowl XLIX win for the Patriots one year ago.
The network, which will have produced more Super Bowl games than any other, rolled out its first Super Bowl 50 promo the Monday after last year’s game. A few days later, CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves chaired a meeting for CBS’s top executives to prep programming plans for an event that still was a year away.
CBS By The Numbers
65,000 square feet — Size of CBS’s Super Bowl compound on game day.
550+ — Number of CBS Sports personnel in the Bay Area for Super Bowl week
70 — Number of CBS cameras covering the game.
12 — Number of CBS production trucks handling pregame and game telecasts.
4 — Number of CBS sets in San Francisco during Super Bowl week.
3 — Number of CBS sets in Santa Clara at Levi’s Stadium.
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• Media Day set for live coverage
The efforts underscore how important CBS views its position as the host broadcaster for the biggest sporting event on the calendar — one that is about to celebrate its 50th matchup.
“Leslie Moonves’ meeting involved virtually every aspect of the CBS Corp.,” said CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. “I’m proud of the way that our company really has been mobilized, and I’m proud of the way we worked with the NFL.”
That planning included all aspects of CBS, from news to sports to entertainment to, even, syndication (“Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider” both will be based in San Francisco during Super Bowl week).
All told, CBS is planning to produce the largest amount of Super Bowl-related programming it has ever generated around a Super Bowl telecast.
For example, every night at 8 p.m. ET during the week before the game, CBS will air a short report from one of CBS Sports’ on-air voices. Jim Nantz is slated to handle the first one from Media Day, and James Brown will do the second one. Other CBS Sports personalities will do others during the week.
“It’s going to capture the excitement around the Super Bowl,” McManus said. “It’s not going to be a preview of the game in terms of deciding who’s got the best defense.”
The network also will carry a two-hour special Tuesday night about the best Super Bowl commercials; it will have a Friday night special on the history of the Super Bowl halftime show; and it will run Saturday night’s presentation of “NFL Honors.”
“There’s been a lot more promotion trying to tie in the 50th Super Bowl theme,” McManus said. “We’ve tried to really wrap Super Bowl 50 around prime time, daytime, news, sports. We’ve given it a much higher priority because it is the 50th and should be the biggest of them all.”
CBS has produced 18 Super Bowls before this one. But the network never has had so much Super Bowl-related programming scheduled during Super Bowl week. McManus said the effort has less to do with promoting the game, which is certain to bring in a massive TV audience. Rather, CBS sees it as a way to attach the network’s logo to the country’s most popular event.
“We are trying to build the brand of CBS and associate it with Super Bowl 50,” McManus said. “One of the reasons why we’ve been promoting it so aggressively is to be able to use and take advantage of that Super Bowl halo effect.”
