Last night, the National Football League partnered with ViacomCBS, the parent company of both CBS and Nickelodeon, to broadcast the play-off game between the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears. This was done on Nickelodeon as the idea was to produce a broadcast aimed exclusively at kids.
There was a trial run during last month’s Philadelphia Eagles-Green Bay Packers game in order to test the graphics, animation, and other technical details.
The game’s broadcast crew consisted of Noah Eagle (the radio voice of the Los Angeles Clippers and son of longtime CBS play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle), NFL Today/NFL Network analyst Nate Burleson, Nickelodeon’s Gabrielle Nevaeh Green in the booth, and Green’s “All That” co-star Lex Lumpkin as the field reporter.
So…what did a hard-grizzled, crabby old man blogger think of this production?
If you’re that guy who loves to talk about football in term like “coverage schemes” and “passing game concepts,” this broadcast was not for you. But then again, if you are one of those guys, or you have half you paycheck tied up in some sort of FanDuel/Draft Kings fantasy/gambling hook, you’re probably a jerk-off who nobody likes anyway.
For what it was intended to do, the overnight ratings points will determine to those in the know if this was a success or not. But on the conceptual level, every other major sports league needs to take a hard look at what the NFL did last night when it comes to attracting new young fans to the game.
After all, the hard-grizzled, crabby old man blogger found twice the number of “pros” than “cons” in this event. What does that tell you?
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I totally missed the Nick coverage, unfortunately, but it’s appropriate that they chose this game for it as a) the Bears offense is child-like and b) Brees has to enjoy reading to his grandkids.
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