The perception is that launching a new show behind the Super Bowl is a no-lose proposition. It's guaranteed to be sampled by at least 20 million viewers, and presumably from there it goes on to be a hit show.
But the reality is that the Super Bowl has never been much of a launch pad for new shows.
Shows that have debuted after the game have gotten great numbers for their premieres but few have been able to retain those viewers in any sizable numbers.
In fact, two of the last three postgame launches were canceled within a year.
As a result, the networks have largely stopped airing new shows in that slot, preferring to air established shows they thought would benefit from exposure to a wider audience. It's been five years since a network slotted a new show after the game.
That's why it's might seem surprising that CBS would decide to premiere "Undercover Boss" behind Sunday's big game.
But actually it's not.
The fact is that CBS doesn't really have any existing shows that would really benefit that much from airing after the game, and that's a measure of just how well the network has been performing this season.
"When I look at the CBS schedule of existing shows, I either see shows that don't need the boost--the Monday comedies, 'NCIS,' etc.--or shows where it probably wouldn't make a difference, e.g., 'Gary Unmarried,'" says David Scardino, entertainment specialist at RPA in Santa Monica, Calif.
In effect, "Undercover Boss" gets the slot by default.
It's sure to get a hefty sampling, and if a goodly share of those viewers do stick around when it moves to its regular 9 p.m. Sunday slot, where the network has struggled, so much the better.
But CBS isn't hanging everything on that one night of sampling. If the show is going to succeed, it's going to do so by building an audience in its timeslot.
The last new drama that debuted right after the game, ABC's "Extreme," premiered to 22.6 million viewers in January 1995 but was canceled just four months later.
Fox has aired new cartoons after the Super Bowl twice since 1999, neither of which did particularly well in the slot. "Family Guy" averaged 22 million viewers in 1999, 11 million fewer than the previous year's postgame show, in what was billed a preview episode of the program.
"Guy" didn't return to the schedule again until April, and Fox was so unimpressed with its performance that it was canceled midway through its second season, though it was later revived after finding a huge audience on DVD and cable.
Fox then premiered "American Dad" the night of the 2005 Super Bowl, but it did not air right after the game. Instead, an episode of "The Simpsons" was sandwiched in, and "Dad" drew just 15.1 million viewers starting well after 11 p.m.
By comparison, last year's postgame episode of "The Office," NBC's fifth-year comedy, drew 22.9 million viewers.
Still, those two cartoons targeted a fairly narrow audience, young men. "Boss," a reality show in which CEOs of major American companies go to work incognito at the lowest level of their business, targets a much broader swath, basically everyone over age 12.
"The big unknown is going to be the mood of the audience which, I believe, will vary depending on whether the game is close (historically not the case) or a blow-out," Scardino notes. "How each of those translates to audience receptivity could be debated endlessly. What I do think is that show should get good sampling."
Good sampling would be an audience of 26 million or more, the average of the last three post-Super Bowl shows. Of note, none of those shows saw a tremendous audience boost for their next episode following the Super Bowl, despite the fact that all three were veteran hit shows.
The best CBS can hope for is that "Boss" draws a couple million more than it would have without the Super Bowl premiere when it moves into its regular Sunday 9 p.m. slot next week.
