The Tiffany Network meets Sin City.
The Super Bowl is making its first venture to Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, and CBS plans to showcase the city of excess’ glitz and glamor throughout its roughly eight hours of live coverage Sunday.
“We really want to capture the essence of Las Vegas,†Drew Kaliski, coordinating producer of “The NFL Today†pregame show, said on a conference call this week. “... We will give the viewers a sense of what Las Vegas is all about.â€
It starts at 1 p.m. (on KMOV, Channel 4 locally) with a cavalcade of live pregame coverage leading up to the kickoff 4½ hours later of the San Francisco-Kansas City contest.
There will be plenty of scene-setting shots from around town and interviews with Vegas entertainers as CBS tries to capture what Kaliski calls “a whole new Super Bowl atmosphere.†Included in that is Sphere, the high-tech music venue with state-of the-art visual effects that cost more than $2 billion to build and is Vegas’ newest big attraction.
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There will be two sets for CBS’ pregame program, one at Allegiant Stadium where the game will be played and another at the iconic water display at the Bellagio resort.
“Nothing says Vegas more than the Bellagio fountains,†said Harold Bryant, CBS Sports’ executive producer and executive vice president of production.
James Brown anchors the elongated pregame show with analysts Phil Simms, Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, Boomer Esiason and JJ Watt. The crew will be split between the two locations for the first hour and a half or so until those at the Bellagio move to the stadium, where CBS also will have two sets — one inside, one outside.
To add to the Vegas vibe in the telecast, CBS plans to have aerial cameras (including a “trolley camâ€) and three drones positioned between the stadium and parts of the nearby Strip, as well as having two dozen live robotic cameras spread from inside the stadium to key points around town.
“It is by far the most complex Super Bowl we’ve ever done,†said Bryant, whose network will be televising the event for the 22nd time. “Our cameras will be out in full force.â€
One new aspect will be the availability of “doink†cameras — tiny devices that are to be inserted into small cutouts in the uprights that could show a ball hitting the pole as well as having the ability to show replays from new angles.
There also will be numerous interviews with players and coaches as well as a segment with Usher, the halftime show act, talking with Burleson about the long history of Black entertainers in Las Vegas.
This could be the last hurrah for “The NFL Today†in its current form, as Cowher, Esiason, Simms and Burleson all have contracts that are expiring, though The Athletic reported that Brown has signed to a new two-year deal.
The last half-hour before the game starts (5-5:30 p.m.) includes introductions of the teams and Reba McEntire singing the national anthem.
Once the game finally begins, it will be Jim Nantz doing the play-by-play of his seventh Super Bowl and Tony Romo alongside as the commentator for the third time. Tracy Wolfson, Evan Washburn and Jay Feely serve as reporters, and former NFL referee Gene Steratore is the rules analyst.
CBS’ daylong coverage also will be streamed on its platform.
Magic man
Sticking with the Vegas entertainment theme, CBS in essence has its own magician.
Burleson, a former NFL receiver, will mix his duties on the pregame, halftime and postgame programming with also doing the game play-by-play for a kids-oriented version of the telecast that will air on Nickelodeon — a children’s cable channel owned by CBS parent company Paramount. All this while continuing his year-round job as co-host of “CBS Mornings,†the network’s sunrise news/entertainment program — which because he’s in the Pacific time zone actually is pre-sunrise as it starts at 4 a.m. there.
He won’t get much sleep after getting off the air Sunday night and returning a few hours later. How will he do all of this? He said he’ll “hop in the phone booth like Superman†to change roles. He joked that his biggest obstacle might be forgetting which set he is on and taking the wrong approach. But he said he’s ready for the challenge.
“As much as CBS has been preparing for the Super Bowl, I’ve been preparing for this week,†he said.
Early birds
If the 4½ hours of live pregame coverage isn’t enough, CBS also will air 2½ hours of taped Super Bowl-related programming that starts at 10:30 a.m. First up is a game preview that will be presented in the style that will be used on the kids-centered alternate telecast of the contest, with graphics from the animated “SpongeBob SquarePants†series splashing the screen.
Then at 11 a.m. comes NFL Films’ annual look back at the season with its “Road to the Super Bowl†special that includes clips of players and coaches who were wearing microphones when some key moments occurred.
That’s followed at noon by a complete shift of gears from CBS’ kids-centered opening act, It wraps up the taped pregame schedule with a one-hour presentation geared to a much older audience. This block looks back at the early years of CBS’ “NFL Today,†the pioneering sports pregame studio show hosted in the mid-’70s by Brent Musburger and featuring diverse personalities as commentators — Irv Cross, Phyllis George, Jimmy “the Greek†Snyder and later Jane Kennedy.
Musburger, whose “you’re looking live†comment at whatever field was being shown became his trademark line, is interviewed in the show, as is Kennedy. They are the only members of that early cast who still are alive.
Other networks
Can’t wait till 10:30 a.m. for CBS’ coverage to start?
NFL Network begins its pregame show at 8 a.m., with host Rich Eisen and commentators Kurt Warner, Michael Irvin, Steve Mariucci and Gerald McCoy heading the reports from the stadium. A bevy of features, interviews and reports are scheduled to air in an 8½-hour marathon.
ESPN signs on at 9 a.m. with its live Super Bowl show, from the stadium, and that runs until 1 p.m., when the network airs a women’s college basketball featuring No. 1 South Carolina at No. 11 Connecticut. Sam Ponder anchors the football coverage and is to be joined on the set in Vegas by Randy Moss, Tedy Bruschi, Larry Fitzgerald, Rex Ryan and Alex Smith. Chris Berman anchors the postgame show from the field.