Talking with Fox Sports president Eric Shanks and Fox NFL Sunday coordinating producer Scott Ackerson you can hear the passion in their voices about getting everything they have envisioned into the network’s Super Bowl coverage. Shanks, an executive with a production background, loves the chance to experience his first Super Bowl as the head of Fox Sports.
Shanks on the production » There are a lot of moving parts that make pregame, the game telecast and the postgame show work. The game broadcast itself is the real constant. We look at it with the same attention to detail as the championship game two weeks ago. But the pregame and the postgame shows must be kept fluid. There will be fresh content being done for the pregame even as it is on the air. As for the postgame, we will of course be working on that as the game unfolds.
Ackerson on the game plan for this year’s Fox Super Bowl Sunday pregame show » One of the things that we’re going to try to do a little differently this time are the red carpet segments. It’s amazing the amount of stars who want to be a part of it now that they’ve seen how it’s gone, as opposed to the first time when it was really hard to get people to show up. We’re going to have some segments where we’ll bring in some old Steelers and some 49ers, Cowboys, and hopefully some Packers as well, and tell stories about the Super Bowl in more of a talk show type of format. That really hasn’t been done in the past. There will be plenty of features about the teams, but I’ve found that when people watch a Super Bowl, they always notice stuff that’s out of the ordinary. They really don’t sit down and watch the piece on Player A or Player B. A big part of that is because the coverage is so saturated in the week leading up to the Super Bowl that they look at it as same-old, same-old. We’re trying to get stories that fans haven’t heard before.
Shanks on whether a Super Bowl on cable television is in the future » I don’t think in the foreseeable future, but who knows 10, 15, 20 years down the line. The line is being blurred between over-the-air broadcast and cable. There’s a generation growing up today who probably has no idea what over-the-air television even means because they or their parents just get a bill in the mail every month and they pay it. I think the economics for the foreseeable future will keep it on broadcast television.
Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!
