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A hipper Super 
Bowl this year?

CBS hopes. Big MTV presence to lure 18-34s.

   In a year when young viewers have been clicking away from football, CBS hopes to lure them to the Super Bowl via MTV.
 As this season’s Super Bowl carrier, CBS yesterday set its pre- and post-game schedule for the Feb. 1 game, and for the first time the annual MTV “TRL @ the Super Bowl” was a part of it.
   The Carson Daly-hosted show usually runs on Super Bowl Sunday on Viacom’s cable unit. But this year Pepsi agreed to sponsor the one-hour special, starting at noon, and move it to CBS.
   The target demographic, adults 18-34, has been dipping on the broadcast networks all year. According to Nielsen data, men 18-34 have been watching 5 to 10 percent less pro and college football this season than last, a trend CBS wants to reverse for the year’s biggest game.
   MTV will also produce the Super Bowl halftime show, announced earlier this week, sponsored by America Online. MTV also sponsored the 2001 show. Viacom’s Nickelodeon will sponsor a one-hour pre-game show aimed at kids 2-11 at 11 a.m.
   The companies expected to buy much of the in-game advertising are heavy sponsors of the pre- and post-game shows. After the MTV special, Phil Simms’ 2004 all-iron team will be presented in an hour-long show sponsored by General Motors/Cadillac, which has bought time in the game itself and will also sponsor the post-game show.
   Thirty-second Super Bowl ads are selling for about $2.3 million, with prime first-quarter spots reportedly going for $2.4 million. That’s almost 10 percent above what last year’s Super Bowl carrier, ABC, received.
   With six weeks until the game, about 85 percent of the ad space has been sold, media buyers told Media Life last week. They said that several new advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, Major League Baseball and Gillette, have bought spots.
   CBS did not release terms of the pre- and post-game sponsorships, although media people say that buying a bulk deal like AOL did with in-game spots and halftime sponsorships could run $7.5 million and up.
   Monster.com, which will spend about double what it did for Super Bowl advertising last year, will sponsor the halftime report.
   The four-hour pre-game show, which begins at 2 p.m., will be sponsored by Wachovia, Pizza Hut, Sony PlayStation, H&R Block, Radio Shack and Ford.
   CBS said several months ago that an all-star edition of “Survivor” would premiere after the game, which kicks off at 6:25 p.m. Though the network still won’t confirm who’ll be competing on the show, Richard Hatch, Rudy Bosch and Susan Hawk from season one, Jerri Manthey and Colby Donaldson from “Survivor: Australia,” Ethan Zohn from “Survivor: Africa” and Rupert Boneham from the current edition are expected.


December 12, 2003© 2003 Media Life


 


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