ABC Wins Super Bowl

LAST Sunday afternoon the real TV action did not kick off at 6:30--with Super Bowl XXII's first down--but at 4:00. IBM computers, Hanes underwear, Volkswagen cars and ABC's World News Tonight were the starting players.

The actual sports event, between a team from Denver and another from the nation's capital, was really only a sideshow to the biggest commercial extravaganza of the year. The broadcast's real highlight came when Pepsi and Coca-Cola unveiled their brand new commercials.

If you watched the entire Super Bowl broadcast from pre-game to postgame, you endured only 60 minutes of actual live football, but you saw more than 180 commercials comprising more than 90 minutes of advertising messages. And except for the action-packed second quarter of the game, the commercials provided most of the program's thrills.

There were bigger stars off the field than on it. Former M*A*S*H stars Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and Wayne Rogers took the field for the IBM team, tossing around football lingo to sell computers. The Smothers Brothers joked for Magnavox, and Eric Clapton sang the praises of Michelob.

And of course, two superstar teams from the soda world battled fiercely: Pierce Brosnan (TV's Remington Steele) and Demi Moore (St. Elmo's Fire) for Coke vs. Michael J. Fox, Jami Gertz (Less than Zero) and Teri Garr for Pepsi.

Pierce Brosnan's James Bond-ish chase-on-top-of-a-moving-train for Diet Coke reportedly cost more than $1 million to film, and it was a disappointment. The commercial tries to cram too many tense moments into too few seconds. The viewer spends so much time trying to firgure out where Brosnan is--hanging off a train or clambering on top--that there is no time to get scared. And then it ends--with Brosnan sipping his soda happily ever after.

But Michael J. Fox has come up with his third straight Pepsi winner. Fox and Gertz battle a loud and hyperactive dog in their attempt to get a Pepsi from a vending machine while they're lost on the road.

The ad is understated and endearing. Unlike Coke's moving train, the set is simple, the action comprehensible. Here Pepsi becomes the object of the escapade, not just an afterthought. As Fox climbs in and out of a car to avoid the obviously harmless canine and grab a drink, his acrobatics remind the viewer of his last good Pepsi commercial (where he climbs out of his apartment to get a Pepsi for his attractive neighbor).

ABC knows that among the 10 most-watched television programs of all time, five of them are Super Bowl broadcasts. In every two-and-a-half minute set of commercials, ABC kept at least 30 seconds to itself--especially promoting its news program and the new show The Wonder Years.

ABC hopes to pick up some new viewers in the aftermath of the Dan Rather/George Bush fiasco on the usually top-rated CBS Evening News. So the network aired commercials touting the credibility of its news department, with paeans to Peter Jennings every half-hour. And Peter Jennings made a rare Sunday appearance with a special news report during the pre-game show.

ABC was also mindful of pulling in viewers for the month of February, which is known in the industry as `sweeps' month and is a crucial period for ratings tests. All networks set their future advertising rates from their audience levels in February. So ABC promoted its upcoming 75 hours of Winter Olympic coverage with reports from Calgary and a blitz of commercials.

In recent years, it's become a tradition to debut a new series after the Super Bowl. By the end of the game, people are too drunk or too tired to change the channel or even to turn the set off, so they sample a new show--and hopefully a hit is born. It worked for The A-Team; why not The Wonder Years?

In addition to seven regular commercials for the new family-oriented show during the game, ABC's sports announcers freely plugged the new show whenever they had a few extra seconds. The sappiest pitch was when Frank Gifford told us that his wife Kathie cried during their special screening of the show.

Some might say that the final score of Super Bowl XXII was 42-10. But in reality, at $650,000 for a half-minute ad, ABC was the winner--raking in at least $33 million dollars from ads and attracting countless more million of viewers to the advertised shows.