On this week’s pod, 57 Emmy Awards worth of Super Bowl insight. First SBJ’s Austin Karp is joined by Ben Fischer from Las Vegas talk the upcoming Super Bowl. The duo discuss reaction to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s definitive answer on if the Super Bowl’s streaming future and other things that have stood out leading up to the Super Bowl.
Later in the show CBS Executive Producer and Executive VP, Production, Harold Bryant joins to talk about what we can expect from the entire Paramount family for the Super Bowl and then Fred Gaudelli, Executive Producer of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football on Prime Video joins to give insight on how he is viewing this year’s Super Bowl.
Chapters:
00:53 WHOS UP WHOS DOWN
07:09 REACTION TO GOODELL
12:18 THE BIG GET HAROLD BRYANT
23:43 KARPS CORNER
25:56 THE BIG GET FRED GAUDELLI
34:08 WHAT ARE WE WATCHING
#superbowl2024 #superbowl #cbs #nbcsports #amazon #sanfrancisco49ers #kansascitychiefs #thesportsmediapodcast
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We have to fish where the fish are, and we have a lot of consumers that are on those platforms. Speaking of fish, I’m Austin Karp, and we’re casting a line all the way up to Las Vegas with Ben Fisher reeling in a pair of Super Bowl producers with big game insights.
And we will hook you up with what era you should be in in our history dating era. What are you in. My Super Bowl era? Oh. We are back for another sports media podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal. I’m Austin Karp. We’ll hear from Harold Bryant of CBS
And Frank Adelie of Amazon and NBC sports later in the show. But we first bring in Ben Fisher, who joins us from Las Vegas. Ben, thanks for taking the time. Austin. Happy to. From the strip before the Superbowl. Let’s do our who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s up? Who’s down?
Ben. Who do you got? Who’s up is Matt Shapiro? He’s the vice president of event strategy and integration for the NFL. And he is the one that oversees the new look Pro Bowl games. Now, that sounds a little strange. I know the numbers were down. They were two down 9% year over
Year to about 5.8 million viewers. But, you know, I think a case can be made. The NFL is happy. It hasn’t dropped further. You know, they replaced a tackle football game such as it was with a non tackle football game. And there’s a certain number of people flipping through their sports
Channels on a Sunday afternoon who used to see something that looked like traditional gridiron football. Now they’re seeing I don’t know what they interpret that to be. But it’s not that. And the bottom hasn’t fallen out of that audience. And meanwhile, you know, I think they’re accomplishing some of the
Real goals there with, you know, the helmets off approach. You know, I was watching it. I thought it was fairly entertaining as a good game. The Mannings were funny and engaging as head coaches. They were doing their thing. And, you know, with the mask off, you know, I could see what C.J.
Stroud was trying to engineer a last second drive for the AFC to win. You could see it in his eyes. He really wanted that. He wasn’t goofing around. There’s a great moment where CeeDee lamb made a great catch at the goal line, but he was out of bounds.
And you could see Sauce Gardner’s eyes dart over to the white paint to see if he would come down in bounds. These are insights in these players I never get during the season, so I think the NFL is pretty pleased with it. I think they also have to be happy
With it. Like what you said, it creates like social media clips that they can do. It could be for TikTok, Instagram, you know, highlights like you said. Jason Kelce talking about Taylor Swift. They can put that clip online so I can get past what is probably going to be a record low audience
For the Pro Bowl in that, like you said, they’re creating an event that is for a younger demo to attract newer viewers to NFL action, particularly for the Pro Bowl. It was something that, you know, years ago was after the game, it became an afterthought. I do like the new format.
I think it’s going to I think it’ll pick up more of a casual audience as we go. Thursday night, the skills competition that was up, I think up a little bit and probably the best since around 2018 for that. So there were some good, you know, notes on the audience side
For the NFL. My who’s up this week is Caitlin Clark. She continues to just drive the numbers. The Iowa Maryland women’s basketball game. It was in Fox on prime time on Saturday. That’s Fox’s best women’s basketball game on record. And if you look at the top five games this season, Iowa has now
Played in three of five of them. She is a ratings magnet. She is a Tiger Woods, not at that level with the numbers, but she is a Tiger Woods for women’s basketball this season. We already saw what she could do with the national championship numbers last season, so I am
Very interested to see what sorts of records she sets down the stretch here in the regular season and what she can do come women’s tournament time. My who’s down the Washington Capitals? It mainly has to do with their numbers on Monumental Sports Network. That’s in the DC market, down 44% this season.
I think that’s the biggest draw for any local team in their market. And they still have Alex Ovechkin, who is very slowly chasing a record that Wayne Gretzky has. But he’s always been a draw on TV. You always saw him on national games, but there’s sort of a malaise.
The team missed the playoffs for the first time in around a decade last season, and they just haven’t been playing up to what fans have expected. Also, I think monumental has moved to some different tiers in the local area, so that may be impacting some numbers.
So I want to see them pick it up in the back half and see if Ovechkin can start scoring a few more goals to really pick up that audience. Ben, who’s your down? Right down is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his attempts to downplay his annual Pre-super Bowl press
Conference this week by moving it from Wednesday to Monday and only doing it by invitation only. Now, I almost reconsidered this one because the press conference as it actually developed was was pretty thorough, and I don’t think there were too many absences from people or outlets who would have otherwise been there.
But that’s because a lot of reporters took fairly extraordinary steps to get there. The league appeared to go out of its way ahead of time to make it difficult to attend. They didn’t communicate these changes until very late in the game, until after I and most other people had booked hotels and flights
Based on the assumption that this would be later in the week than Monday. And it was hard to get there. You throat. So I secure a special security credential three different times and take a bus. And it’s frustrating because, the official reason was to put it to Monday before the opening
Night to keep the media attention on the players, which sounds like a reasonable thing to do. But of course, every sports league wants to keep the attention on the players. Sports leagues do pretty well what we’re talking about the product on the field, their controversies tend to be off the
Field. So I kick that. But you know, it’s naive to say that the league is just football. Roger Goodell is ahead of a $20 billion plus business whose product more or less keeps several key media companies in business, gambling. Is big, controversial business. It’s folly to suggest that, you
Know, writing about or driving media attention to anything other than the actual players is somehow a waste of time. So, I mean, the press conference, you know, wasn’t so bad at the end of the day, but they were really kind of playing Q games with the media for, for no good
Reason, as far as I can. Tell, you know. Speaking of Goodell’s press conference here, he is talking about a potential Super Bowl going to a streaming platform. What the plans are, if there’s an expanded plan for streaming games next season. Well, Sam, I think you first have to
Back up a little bit and sort of understand where the media landscape is going. It’s it’s changing faster, deeper. Consumers are moving off of paid television services and going into digital streaming services and platforms. And we as the NFL have to be able to reach our fans here.
We have to fish where the fish are. And we have a lot of consumers that are on those platforms. I don’t know where it goes from here, but we’re going to continue to reach our fans where they are. Could we see a streaming Super Bowl in the future? Certainly not in my time.
And were you surprised at all that he immediately shot this down? I mean, I know we’re not close, but he definitively said we’re not going to have this during my tenure, and we know he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. No. I was not surprised, just because it seems like such an absurd
Thing to suggest, based on current market conditions, that we would take the Super Bowl to streaming only. I’d have to get some financial analysts in here to tell me exactly when the audience would have to cross some number on a chart, where that would make people more
Money than just putting it on free, free to air TV and selling ads against it. But my strong understanding is that we are, you know, years and years from that. So I guess if I was surprised, it was because the NFL never says anything definitively about anything. They always want to keep
All of their options open at all times. But, you know, strictly speaking, Roger’s tenure is only guaranteed to be three and a half more years, I think. So I think we can all agree that that’s not going to happen in three and a half years. Maybe it happens sooner than we
Think, but it’s still many years away, so I didn’t make any news to me. In my opinion. No, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I don’t see it happening for a few iterations of media rights deals, let alone this current one. Right. Any talk of that or any time
During Goodell’s administration, you know, and we talk about declining numbers. It’s mainly when we talk about the declining universe for cable TV broadcast TV still free for everyone. I don’t think you’re going to be asking seven, $7.5 million on a streaming platform for a 32nd spot. I just don’t see that existing
In today’s media ecosystem. And it would the Super Bowl. I have to imagine among any amongst anything, any live event that’s on TV, sports or otherwise, is going to be the last thing that migrates to any streaming platform. So I don’t see it for decades at this point.
Yeah, I agree, you know, it’s like you could almost imagine a day where broadcast TV is nothing but local news and literally the Super Bowl and maybe a couple games, the NBA finals. You know, Ben, something Goodell also talked about was the success that the first season of NFL’s
Sunday Ticket, that out of market package, the good season that it had on YouTube TV. What did you say about that? Right. This was in the context of that same question about the Super Bowl moving. And he was discussing the the pace of change in streaming and, and how
The NFL is trying to put games on, on platforms that younger people are watching. And one of his points was that, it almost fell under the radar because it strikes me as pretty newsy, if he meant this literally. But he said that subscriptions to, Sunday Ticket had doubled in YouTube’s first year.
The last I think we had heard official numbers from reputable sources. We heard 1.3 million signups for YouTube through Sunday Ticket. And historically, that number we always had for, for direct TV was one 5 to 2. So it was truly doubled then. That would seem to be a big,
Big deal. And it really paints the that long term deal in a new light in terms of numbers and expectations for YouTube. Well, I know quality wise I watched it this season. I’ve long been a YouTube TV subscriber and I loved the functionality. I loved what it was able to do
In season one. I had no issues and I know Google was, you know, happy to talk about it. In their quarterly report this season, they released numbers that YouTube TV is up to around 8 million subscribers now. So I’m interested to see, you know, how that continues to grow.
On the package there, you posed a question to Goodell about strategic options with NFL media. What did you have to say about what’s going on there? Right. I asked him, you know, pointed out that had been more than two and a half years since the NFL said that they were exploring strategic options.
They had hired Goldman Sachs to to look for something to do with, minority stake in NFL media. And the deal hasn’t happened yet. He essentially said, no, he’s not worried. And that, you know, they don’t do business on. I timeline and that, you know, they will continue to look for options in that.
Otherwise they’re pretty pleased with how they manage this, changing, to this revolutionary time in the media business. But it’s true that they are still out there looking for, you know, a partner. Ben Fisher. You’re in Las Vegas. You’re also, I believe, staying in what is a giant Dorito covered hotel there. Yes.
I’m in the Luxor with a Dorito logo plastered on one side of the, pyramid. That’s that’s true. There’s lots of NFL and NFL sponsor branding around here, but the don’t make no mistake, the same glorious, tacky neon is still out and about in Vegas. It’s not all NFL.
Well, I’m sure it’s something we’re going to see a lot of this week. Last question, Ben. The big one. We don’t know if Taylor Swift’s going to be there yet, but we got to get your audience prediction for Sunday’s game. Chiefs 40 Niners was around 114 million English language last year 115 million.
If you count the Spanish broadcast. What do you got this year? Yeah, for over. 115 last year you know right. Let’s go. 120 you know, I think that it’s I think it’s every reason to believe it’s going to be in line with the annual increase overall for the regular season, give or
Take a million. So that seems like a nice number. All right. Ben Fisher on the ground in Las Vegas. Appreciate you taking the time. Sure thing. Let me get back to the, slot machines. Slot machine. Bring. Our first big out of the week is CBS sports Executive Producer and EVP Production Harold
Bryant Harrell. Thanks for taking the time to chat. All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So first big question. We got to know where do you keep 31 Emmy Awards. Is there a separate room in the house? Like where do those go? Actually, I split it up.
I put some in the office and some in the house. You know, a shelf, a bookshelf and, just just, keep them out where hopefully they’re not too obnoxious, but, you know, if you want to see them, they’re there. So I keep some in the office and some at home.
But it’s a team effort. Well, it’s an impressive collection, for sure. Obviously a team effort there. Yes. And the Emmys are all about a team effort. I would never claim that. You know, I won all these Emmys on my own. It was an incredible team that I work with at CBS.
Well, switching to Super Bowl week in preparation, how is that going for you and your team on the ground in Vegas? It’s going really well. I will say this. This is my ninth Super Bowl that I’ve worked on, and it is the most complicated. It’s the biggest, setup we’ve ever had, the most
Expansive set up. We’ve gone, big in and, and entertainment a little bit, you know, embracing the, life and, lights and the glitz and glamor of Vegas. So we’ve embraced it and we’ve gone big, but it’s complicated and but we we been working on it for two years. We’re in really good shape.
I mean, it’s one of those logistical issues, the team hotels being so far away from the strip, has that had a major impact on your team? No, no, not the team hotels necessarily. It’s more about, our sets are being, you know, our main set during the week and
On Super Bowl Sunday, they start the days in the middle of the Vegas, the Las Vegas Strip, right on Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the Bellagio. And so, you know, there’s challenges there. You can’t block traffic. And we’re. How do you set that up? And then here at the
Stadium, you know, we’ve got multiple broadcasts we’re responsible for. We’ve, you know, we’re up to 165 cameras throughout the week, you know, around the city. And so how does a facility handle all of that? So we’re just figuring that out where you put all of your your trucks in your control rooms and,
The personnel that it takes to to, handle all that technology. So the team hotels there, we, you can use some type of satellite set up to capture what happens to the team hotels, but it’s really what’s happening in the downtown area. That’s, the challenge. You know, CBS has a ton of
New technological innovations you guys are going to have on Sunday. What are some of the coolest bells and whistles that viewers should be looking for during the broadcast? Some of the coolest bells and whistles. Well, you know, we love all of our, high speed cameras that we have
Around the gold lines and along the the edges, the end lines of the field, the in in bounds, out of bounds. We’ve got 4K cameras, we’ve got pylon cameras, we’ve got this great camera hanging directly over the goal line. So you can get that definitive look.
And it’s a it’s the type of camera that’s 4K. You can you can zoom into it, you know down to the little specks in the, in the field of, you know, the rubber flying in the air. Just, just to really see if a ball crosses from a foot, crosses a knee is down,
All those type of things. So we’re really focused on the game presentation, capturing that. We’ve got, some really cool cameras in the uprights as a first timer, Julian. Or antibodies doing what we’re calling it, the doink cams. You know, you hear that noise when the ball hits the uprights.
So we’re hoping we can catch that. There’s three cameras in each goalpost. So we could actually it’s not just hitting the camera. We can see the ball coming by the camera as well. So hopefully we’ll, we’ll be able to capture something cool like that. We’ve got, augmented reality, you know, graphics that
We’re putting on to the field or into the stands. We’ve got augmented reality around town, popping up out of the, the fountain, you know, so we’ve got all, all sorts of, you know, cool stuff. We got caught drones. We’ll have some cool drones flying around. Not, over the field or anything like
That. We can’t do that. But throughout the. City during the week. We’ve got, great sky cams and and, point to point cameras, one that will fly over the water at the Bellagio and another three at the stadium. So we are just. You know, loaded with all sorts of
Stuff. We got robotics around town. Robotic cameras capturing all the images. So, you know, all sorts of great stuff. I got to imagine the, the drone footage you might have from up and down the strip is going to be pretty impressive. So, yes, we’re doing all sorts
Of, you know, we’ve done all sorts of shoots where you capture the city at different days, time of day and night, and, we’re really leaning into the Vegas scene. It’s a little bit gaudy, which is Vegas. It’s fun, it’s entertainment, and we want to capture that all week. And on Super Bowl Sunday.
You know, come kick off Sunday night. What are you going to be doing as the broadcast is kicking off? You know I’m focused on our quality control, making sure the broadcast looks great from start to finish, making sure we’re not missing any storylines, making sure we’re, not, you know, you if there’s
An angle that we haven’t seen, you know, helping out our crew, making sure we’re, you know, getting that angle on the air and. Yeah, just making sure the big picture, taking that step back and saying. As a viewer at home. Are we missing anything? So, I’m looking at the arc of the story,
And I’m also looking at the quality control, working closely with our production and our ops team, making sure it sounds great. The pictures are great, and we’re on point with our stories within that. Outside of missing obviously a key shot. Is there any element in particular that would like keep you
Up at night? Of course everyone likes going at the worst case scenarios, right? Yeah, worst case scenario. I mean, it already happened to us. You know it years ago in New Orleans, when the power goes out, those are the type of things that that keep me up at night.
I think most, you know, the rest of the stuff we can adjust to. Hey, in our pre-game show, a guest doesn’t show up. We can. We can adapt. That’s what we do. Great. We’re live TV. If it starts to rain, well, we can adapt to the rain. We can move the reporter someplace
Else or get in the proper gear or. Hey, a team bus is late, or, you know, we got an extra interview. Let’s jump in now. Coach decides he wants to go early. That’s the stuff we like. Yeah. You know, all of a sudden the coach said, you know, hey,
Let’s do the interview now. Not five minutes from now. Sure, we’ll blow up the show a little bit and throw them in there. Well, I don’t sleep much about Super Bowl anyway, so, I just want to make sure all our bases are covered. We have a lot of backups, and I feel
Confident we’re in, we’re in a great position right now. You know, put on a, phenomenal broadcast. You know, this question is obviously for all of the Swifties that are listening to the sports media podcast. Yeah. How much time is is CBS spending on a Taylor Swift does
Show a plan versus a Taylor doesn’t show up plan. You know, believe it or not, we’re not spending that much time on it. Let me say it. We love Taylor Swift. We want her to be here. It’s pretty simple. You know, if she shows up, we will have the proper coverage
Of her integrated into the game. We’re not going to overdo it. But she is a larger than life fan, and we want to cover that. We want to capture that. We’re not gonna, you know, make it the, you know, a big storyline in the game. But just like any other celebrity, we are
Going to show her and just, you know, if we catch us, you know, we’ll look for families of other athletes, and we show them as well. We show, you know, wives and friends and parents. We show it off. And, you know, I know she’s just this global superstar when you see her
That it seems like, you know, it’s it’s bigger than it really is. We’re going to, balance is what we do with the broadcast. She’ll be the appropriate balance throughout the game. Hopefully she makes it, you know, from wherever she’s coming from, like, Tokyo and, you know, they bring good data.
You know, have her part of the, Super Bowl. Good way to get her in there. So from your years in the production truck, what is the moment you remember the most from a Super Bowl? I do remember, the moment that, the lights went out. I mean, that was a, you know, a,
You know, a challenging moment when we were in New Orleans, when the lights went out and it was, but we handled it. Well, that’s what I remember. I remember the team reacting. No one panicking. Everyone doing their jobs. Figuring out how we can get back on the air and, report the story.
So that’s what I remember. You know, kind of that negative side, give you an entertainment moment. That Prince halftime. That was our Super Bowl in the, you know, in the rain in Miami singing Purple Rain. That was, that was a phenomenal, pretty fortuitous. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty fortuitous with that one.
Oh, my gosh, that was that was unbelievable. And, I’ve been a lifelong Giants fan. I think our the first Super Bowl I worked out it was a little difficult where, Baltimore, you know, knocked out the Giants there, but, it was it was it’s something you remember is it’s your,
You know, your first one that you’ve worked on. So, you know, those are kind of the big moments that I remember. That’s jumped out at me. I mean, I can name off, you know, dozens of them. Well, Harold, we wish you and your team the best of luck in Las Vegas this week.
You know, you guys are going to kick butt. Harold Bryant, executive producer for CBS sports. Thanks for joining the sports media podcast. Thank you. Now it’s time for a Carps corner. First thing, I want to talk about the NHL All-Star game. We’re at 1.4 million viewers on ABC,
Which is down around 7% from last year. Definitely not a record low, but the on ice product was lauded. I asked my colleague Alex Silverman, tell me about, you know, what he was hearing. Everybody loved it. Hockey fans enjoyed the newer format, but casual fans do
Need to find this on TV and get to know it to enjoy it a little more. It was a solid window. I thought on Saturday afternoon you weren’t up against the Pro Bowl. You avoided games like Duke Chapel Hill on ESPN that night, which had double the audience with the NHL
All-Star game got. But the skills competition for the NHL was also down on Friday, and the all star player draft on Thursday, which was around 6 to 7 p.m. on the deuce, drew fewer than 50,000 viewers. They need to make that event more visible, you know, to drum up
Interest leading into the weekend. Second, the New York Post’s Mark Ken Azaro had a piece Monday about MetLife Stadium getting the 2026 World Cup final. I thought he made some good points that although NFL venues in LA and the Dallas area are shinier, newer and more importantly, indoors, New York is the
Biggest market in this country. It brings a lot of cultural diversity. If you want to look at previous hosts for the World Cup final, it’s overwhelmingly a country’s biggest city, with the exception of maybe something like Yokohama over Tokyo in 2002. But this is the world’s biggest event in the country’s biggest
Media market. It just makes sense. Now let’s open the weather cooperates in 2026. Finally, the Grammys drew around 17 million viewers on Sunday night. That is the best figure for that award show since 2020. The Grammys should also be giving a shout out to out of home viewing for
Helping the number get a little bit of an uptick, but let’s also put the Grammys into a sports perspective. The audience for the show was lower than what the SEC Championship drew back in December. That was around 17.5 million. It’s also way less than what the Peacock Wild Card Game got
Just a couple of weeks ago. It’ll get the Grammys back into the top 100 most watched shows for the year. And either way, it shows the power of live entertainment, sports or otherwise. Our next big get is Fred Goodell, executive producer for the NFL on NBC and Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.
Fred, thanks for taking the time to chat. Austin, great to be here. Thank you. So obviously the game not on NBC this year. Where are you watching the game? I’m going to be watching it from a friend’s house in Los Angeles. I hope you guys got a good food spread already planned.
What’s your what’s your go to, you know, for your Super Bowl parties? Well, back in the day, when it was just my daughter and I, we’d get wings and nachos and ice cream and, that was the spread for Super Bowl Sunday. That’s a good spread. Those are those are solid go tos.
Can’t can’t beat them. Can’t get you can’t go wrong there. If you were producing the game or when you do produce the game, what would be your focus or vision that you really hone in on for a Super Bowl telecast? I mean, the philosophy was, let’s cover the game as well
As we can cover it and surround it so it looks like the spectacle that it is. So the ins, the outs, the elements that, you know, run inside the telecast, those should all reflect the spectacle that the Super Bowl is, you know, the biggest day in America, you know, bar
None. But then you want to make sure that you are covering that game with a real specific expertise. So when the game is over, there are no questions as to who won, why they won, and how they won. As a producer, is your conversation with the guys in the booth different
Than any other game during the course of a season? Not really. I mean, look, we’re all very, keenly aware. This is probably 5 or 6 times the audience of a Sunday Night Football game. So, you know, you’re speaking to a lot of people that you haven’t spoken to during the season,
So you’re not going to dumb it down, but you’re also looking for things that really appealed, you know, would appeal to the huge masses and things of that nature. So you might have, you know, a little bit of that in commercial, but most of the conversation in commercial is, hey, what just happened?
Do we need to go back and clarify anything? Okay. What’s coming up next? Have we told this story yet? Have we introduced this player, you know, to a much larger audience yet? So those are what the conversations are like during the game. You know, with the announcers.
You know, obviously Vegas is a very unique setting for this year. Superbowl hasn’t been there before. But in terms of other unique Super Bowl settings that you’ve covered from a production standpoint, what might rival what has rivaled that uniqueness that you think Las Vegas is going to deliver?
Well, you know, we had the, first Super Bowl in, LA proper, since Super Bowl seven, when we did Super Bowl 56 a couple of years ago. And so far and so far at that time, obviously, was brand new stadium. I think it was only a couple of years old.
So when you get that, you’re getting all the LA celebrities, like you’re going to get the celebrities in Vegas on Sunday. So there was that aspect to it. But the celebrities do tend to travel, to all the Super Bowls. It’s you know, it’s a it’s the biggest event in America.
It’s a place to be seen. They like to go. But I would say LA, you know, certainly would rival Vegas because again, it was the first time it was in LA proper since Super Bowl seven. Did a couple of cold weather ones. Minneapolis would be the latest one. U.S. Bank Stadium. Terrific stadium.
I think it was minus three. We walked into the stadium that morning, so, yeah, that that that was unique. I remember everyone being really thankful that that one was going to be indoors. That was that was a cool one, for sure. It was. If this was your Super Bowl, how
Would you be going about asking for some face time with Taylor Swift before the game? Do you go to the league? Is that your best bet? Is the Chiefs going to Kelsey directly? What would have been your approach? You know, I think, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of bookers
Over the years that have great connections. You know, when I produced the SB Awards or other things that I’ve done. And I probably would have gone that route first, you know, to see for our pre-game show if she would be interested in doing an interview. You know, if that didn’t work, I’d
Probably talk to the league, because obviously they’re fairly tied in with her. I don’t know that I would bother. Travis. Kelsey, the week of the Super Bowl with an interview with Taylor. Might be slightly busy. Just slightly busy and might be a tad insulting. I mean, he’s a great player.
He’s going into the Hall of Fame. He kind of stands on his own. I mean, how long is that workday? How long is that workday during a suitable. Super Bowl Sunday? Yeah, I mean, I would I would generally wake up, depending on what coach the game was
On, if it was least, well, I was waking up at the same time regardless. But I was up by 6 a.m. local time. I would screen a couple of tapes. One more time, I. Screen them once. I want to go back and make sure I really was happy with everything
That we had done. And, you know, for a West Coast Super Bowl, I think we were in the trucks by 8 a.m. and we were starting our own technical rehearsal just to make sure everything was working properly. And we were, you know, rehearsing, executing elements that were going to happen in the telecast.
So it’s a long day. You know, it’s probably, you know, about, you know, 16, 17, 18 hours, but it’s the best day of the year when you get to do it. That’s a long day. It’s a long day. No, quite. No doubt in the production truck. What is the moment you remember
The most from your Super Bowl coverage? You know, it’s one it’s one of three. And I can’t really decide which one it is. I think, though, if you had to make me pick one, I would. We’re going to hold you to it. Okay. James Harrison’s 101 yard interception return at the end
Of the half. I mean, at the end of the half, you know, in Super Bowl 43 between the Cardinals and the Steelers. And then that same game, you know Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes in the corner of the end zone I think it was a little over a minute. And then Malcolm Butler’s
Interception on the goal line against Seattle. Looks like they were going to repeat as Super Bowl champions. And had that taken away from them. Last couple questions to get you out of here. What is your advice to up and coming producers? You know, I think, the one
Thing I would say is there’s a tendency to really try to get intense and kind of zoom in on things and, and like, the big stuff starts flying by you. I think the best thing you can do is kind of zoom out a little bit, try
To see as much as you can see, try to make sure the stories you know are being told. Try to leave a telecast without the audience having questions as to what happened or how it happened or why it happened. And, you know, that takes a lot of preparation.
It takes a lot of immersion into whatever the sport that you’re producing, but it also takes the discipline to not be on top of it and be away from it and try to experience it the way that, you know, the person on the couch is experiencing it.
All right. Last question who you got on Sunday? Well, I cannot and I’m not betting, literally, but I figuratively cannot bet against Patrick Mahomes. I just can’t. I have I have great respect for Kyle Shanahan. I think he’s a tremendous coach. I love the 40 niners. But the biggest, star in this game
Is Patrick Mahomes. And it’s rare that he doesn’t deliver. So I’m going with the Chiefs. Yeah I’ve learned better than the pick against him in the Chiefs. I get myself in trouble every time that happens. So I kind of agree with you on sticking with Patrick Mahomes there in the playoffs.
Well Fred Goodell, executive producer for the NFL on NBC and Thursday Night Football on Prime and 26 time Emmy winner. Thank you for taking the time to join the sports media podcast today. Had a great time talking Super Bowl. Thanks, Austin. It’s time now for what are you watch where Sports
Business Journal reporters tell us what sports media story they are keeping an eye on. This week. We start with SBG assistant managing editor and golf reporter Josh Carpenter. All right. As BJ’s golf reporter, the biggest story I’m watching in sports media is what happens to the PGA Tour’s media deals
With this new investment by the Strategic Sports Group and a potential investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The PGA Tour’s current media deals run through 2030. How does this new money change how those look? Does it change how they look at all? The PGA tour increasingly is becoming a media company
And a lot of people’s opinion. They’re building the new PGA tour studios in Ponte Vedra Beach. They just launched a new fleet of production trucks. You know how this money comes in and changes those media deals, changes how golf is viewed on TV is something I’m really keeping an
Eye on as we move forward. As for the Super Bowl, I love Patrick Mahomes. It’s hard to bet against them. I like them on Sunday. As for a viewership prediction, let’s say 118.2 million viewers for Super Bowl 58 on Sunday afternoon. Now let’s go to Xavier Hunter. A sports media story that I’m
Following closely is the Caitlin Clark cam that Fox Sports recently ran in partnership with TikTok. I’m curious to see what more networks partner with social media platforms to highlight our superstars such as Lionel Messi, LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes. Speaking of Patrick Mahomes, I do have Mahomes and the Chiefs winning
3420 over the 40 Niners in this year’s Super Bowl. We’re South Jersey’s own Isaiah Pacheco claimed Super Bowl MVP viewership numbers for this year. I think they could reach up to 150 million, I think. The excitement around Usher and Taylor Swift intended will drive those numbers to astronomical numbers.
And now I’m a pass off the Joe, the mirror. The sports media story I’m following is the regional sports networks. Diamond, of course, is in bankruptcy proceedings. But then all of a sudden Amazon stepped in as a guarantor, sort of that troubled friends you had that suddenly has
That rich uncle coming in to to ensure that he can keep his apartment. I mean, this is, a potential game changer and a huge inflection point for Major League Baseball, which had been signaling interest in creating its own bundle of teams for in-market streaming. It had even been on the Fox Sports
Are since that eventually became the Sinclair owned Diamond Networks later on. But, you know, last year, Commissioner Manfred got up at the podium and said, quote, I hope we get to the point where on the digital side, when you go to MLB.tv, you can buy whatever the heck you want.
I mean, MLB clearly envisioned some sort of ala carte streaming or subscription package that comes directly from the league itself. But of course, the teams in the clubs have been so dependent on this regional sports network broadcast money to fund their teams. So we’ll see where this goes. The bankruptcy judge won’t rule
On the, on the offer until at least June. But either way, it seems like it’s going to keep the diamond in business for 2024. And now maybe beyond. You know, it’s also interesting to see how the implementation goes. Right now, diamond has the in-market streaming for the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals,
Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay rays. Indications are that, you know, people living in those markets will still have to subscribe. It’s not going to be included in Prime Video. But will that be enough of a carrot for those fans to, to do so? I know Amazon certainly wants more
Year round sports programing beyond just the very successful Thursday Night Football. But if they’re getting involved, you know, it certainly signals this is going to be a very premium product. And we’ll see what happens going forward. And then of course, this weekend’s the Super Bowl. I think I have to pick the Chiefs
23, 40 Niners 13. I find it hard to see Mahomes making too many mistakes out there. As for an audience, you know, it certainly never hurts to have Taylor Swift’s involvement. What may. Well have been a record breaking audience anyway will almost certainly be that. Now I’ll say about 117 million,
And I will turn it over to SBA basketball writer Tom friend for his insights. The media story I’m watching this week is the whole Travis Kelce Taylor Swift thing, because earlier this week at the Grammys, when Taylor Swift won her big award, she didn’t mention Travis. I thought that was who is
He out. So I think people are going to be monitoring every move this week. He’s going to get a million questions in all the media days and in Vegas for the Super Bowl. And she’s going to be in Tokyo and that’s all going to come up.
So the big media story is really the vet. And I’m sure leading up to the Super Bowl, there’ll be other things about the Super Bowl. But that’s the one I’m watching. And obviously I think also I want to do mention that with the NBA losing ESPN, losing Doc Rivers as their
Lead analyst, I think there’s watching these games as a big void. I feel like they really, really I don’t know, Mark Jackson Jeff Van Gundy must be sitting somewhere kind of chuckling because they’re sort of out of the mix. And I think ESPN needs another voice in there
Like a Doc Rivers that they don’t have right now. I would say the Super Bowl coming up. My prediction I want to talk about that. That’s the Super Bowl prediction I have is I think the Niners are going to win that the more desperate team this is really going to validate.
Kyle Shanahan as a head coach. They don’t win this game. The scrutiny on him is going to be big. They’re favorites. they’ve lost them last time. The Chiefs have nothing to lose. But I think this game means the world. I mean, literally the world to the 40 niners.
And they’re going to win the game. As far as the viewership in this game, I’m predicting north of 115 million. I think with a Taylor Swift entrance, she’s flying in from Tokyo. And the Chiefs Mahomes such a draw. The 40 Niners are a huge market I think I think it’s going to break
Records this Super Bowl. And for what he’s looking at this week let’s move over to Brett McCormick. The sports media story I’m watching this week is who comes up with the best drinking game for Taylor Swift. I’m curious to see, like, how the network handles showing her during the game.
Like, will they talk about how much will they talk about her? They’re kind of in this gray area of, like, they could push people away. It could be too much. But then there’s also this whole audience that, like, can’t get enough of her. So I’ll just be sitting back, you know, playing
Whichever drinking game I see that, that works out best. My Super Bowl prediction is, I think the San Francisco 40 niners will win 27 to 20. I think it’ll come down to the last drive and the chefs will fall short. The chef is great. And my prediction for Super Bowl viewership is
121 million something. Finally, we’ve heard from my colleagues here at. Time for my Super Bowl. Audience prediction Chiefs 40 Niners. I’m predicting English and Spanish 121 million viewers. I think you’re going to see a big uptick among casual fans, young fans in particular. You may see the largest
Audience yet among kids who have watched the Super Bowl. I think Taylor is going to be there. I think regardless, though, the Super Bowl is going to feed off of what has been a very successful season for the NFL on TV. So you heard it. My prediction 121 million
Viewers and those 121 million viewers are going to see Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs pull off another Super Bowl win. I have learned better than to predict anything but Patrick Mahomes leading his team to another victory. So that’s another episode of the Sports Media podcast. I want to thank my guest, Frank
Adelie. Harold Bryant, thank you, Ben Fisher, for coming in from Las Vegas. Thank you, of course, to my production team, Chris Mason, A.C. Wyatt, Reggie Walker. Hope you all have a great Super Bowl Sunday. Everyone enjoy the spreads at each of your parties. We’ll talk to you next week.
We have to fish where the fish are. Speaking of fish. I’m Austin Karp. Fish are friends, not food.
