As I was drinking my coffee the other morning and reading The Wall Street Journal (we don’t actually have a subscription, but we used to, and it still randomly shows up at our door from time to time), I came across a little blurb about how the BBC carried live coverage of the Super Bowl this year. How odd is that?
I ran a few searches to see if I could find out what watching the Super Bowl would be like in Great Britain. For one thing, since the BBC carried it live, it came on at 11 pm and went until 3 or 4 in the morning. Obviously, only the die-hards would do something crazy like stay up all night and watch American football. Are there enough American expatriates to make it worth the BBC’s while? I wondered. But at least a few native Brits were up. I found a video blog on You Tube made by a young man who was having a Super Bowl party at his house (“nothing much, just 10 or 15 people coming round”). Apparently he’s a fan of American football, and even though he can’t pronounce the names of some of the teams, at least he tries. Among the party snacks was a substantial amount of Red Bull to keep everyone awake!
Another interesting aspect of the British Super Bowl was the complete lack of commercials. The Super Bowl without commercials? Who could imagine such a thing? But, as one article from the Times (London) points out, “If there is one thing we know about the BBC, it’s that it takes a dim view of…adverts and has never shown one.” So the poor British announcers who were given the task of covering this strange, foreign event were also given absolutely no breaks: “Every moment that, in the United States, would have been usefully spent hawking cheese-flavoured Doritos, Woodson and Carlson had to fill with animated conversation. This made them the first sports pundits in living memory to be on the screen for slightly longer, in total, than the game they were analysing.”
What an odd experience this must have been for our friends across the pond. I hope, at least, that they enjoyed it!
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