Superbowl

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 1/28/03 11:39:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, gcohen at UMR.EDU
writes:

> But football announcers don't go off on their own in talking up
>  a new term/product/etc.  They clearly had their marching orders.
>  Those marching orders clearly came from above--from the highest
>  authorities in football, whoever they were.

No, football announcers (and other announcers as well, and do you
"commentators"?) take their orders from their employers.  Some football
announcers work for the networks and some work for local stations.  The
networks hyped the Super Bowl because it meant high ratings for the actual
broadcast, which means they could charge more for commercials.  Local
stations do not usually do much to hype network shows---why bother?  the
network is already doing that.

It might be interesting to see whether annuncers working for local stations
also hyped the Super Bowl.  Perhaps they did not.

No, the "highest authorities in football" did not give marching orders to the
announcers.  Why not?  They didn't have to.  Football, as a business, was
interested in increasing its revenue, which a highly-publicized national
championship would do.

Hence football and the networks were allies in pushing the Super Bowl, and
undoubtedly got together to plot advertising strategy, so it did not matter
in practice that football did not give orders to announcers, since the
networks were happy to.

This brings up the purely academic question: was it football or the networks
that invented the phrase "Super Bowl"?

      - Jim Landau