This Sunday, several worlds will clash: sports, culture, music, and politics all collide during Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.
The Super Bowl remains the last television product Americans are guaranteed to watch together and then talk about the next morning around the water cooler.
Gone are the days of M*A*S*H, Cheers, Seinfeld, or Friends getting tens of millions of Americans around their TV every week. The diversity of content, and lack of quality programming on the major networks, have helped drive the fragmentation of viewership across all platforms.
Even awards shows, once a staple for Americans, are a distant memory. Last week’s Grammys drew 17 million viewers, which was a 35% increase from 2023. That number hovered in the 25-30 million range for most of the 2000s, and even hit 39 million in 2012, which took place 24 hours after Whitney Houston’s death.
So Sunday is it. It’s the last thing we all have as Americans that we watch together. And come Monday morning, every radio station in your city will be talking about it. There will likely be nothing else worth talking about.
And for news/talk hosts who may not be die-hard sports fans, that’s ok. This year, you will have more angles than ever before to weave your content into the Super Bowl in a way that doesn’t require hours of X’s and O’s talk. You can leave that to the sports stations.
Taylor Swift
First off, there’s Taylor Swift, and everything that comes along with her in recent weeks. There have been grand conspiracies around Swift and Kelce in recent weeks (you can read my thoughts on that insanity here).
While I don’t expect anything to come to fruition on Sunday (Sorry, Taylor’s not showing up in a Biden 2024 shirt), the topic itself, along with any reaction on social media and/or during the broadcast will be content gold.
Plus, it gives you a chance to showcase your depth in topics, beyond news, to the audience. You don’t have to like Taylor Swift, but you have to at least know what you’re talking about in any potential criticism you may have. Being up to speed on the pop culture topic of 2024 is important unless you prefer talking into an echo chamber of an out-of-demo and out-of-touch audience.
Commercials
Commercials are always an easy and fun way to weave post-Super Bowl content into a show. Brands spend millions ($7 million for a 30-second ad, to be exact) to get in front of 100+ million Americans.
But rather than just ranking the top commercials, talking about what was funny, what was a bust, and those usual angles, there’s also a great cultural/political angle to add to the conversation this year: Bud Light.
Of course, the brand has had a rough several months, and they’ve now spent millions on commercials during the Super Bowl, trying to win back core consumers they’ve lost in the wake of their Dylan Mulvaney saga. And that ad comes days after Donald Trump said that Bud Light is worthy of a “second chance”.
How does that brand handle the Super Bowl? We’ve already seen one of their ads, which has been released, featuring Peyton Manning, Dana White, and Post Malone.
Has Bud Light done enough to win consumers back?
Presidential Appearances?
Already, the back-and-forth between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has heated up. Joe Biden has declined to do a Super Bowl pre-game interview on CBS, which has been a staple in recent years for Presidents, across the aisle. Donald Trump then announced he would be willing to replace Biden, writing on his Truth Social, “I WOULD BE HAPPY TO REPLACE HIM – would be ‘RATINGS GOLD!'”
The former President is right about that part, but it seems like CBS is just going to pass on involving either man in their pre-game show.
Now, does either President show up to the game? Sportsbooks have odds on both, calling each a long shot to appear in Las Vegas on Sunday.
But if one does? There are certain to be storylines revolving around them.
Come Monday morning, your audience will be a little sleepy and slow going (unless it’s the winning fan base in Kansas City or San Francisco), but they’ll all be thinking about the same thing: The Super Bowl and the party they were at.
No, you’re not a sports show, but being present with your audience, and all of America, can make Monday morning fun, relatively easy, and relatable. Don’t blow it. And Go Chiefs.
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
