Super Bowl XLVII: the tech, the ads, and the blackouts

A half-hour outage during Super Bowl XLVII was the result of an electrical relay with incorrect settings, says the device’s manufacturer. Shortly after the outage, power company Entegy reported that “a piece of equipment that’s supposed to monitor electrical load malfunctioned, opened a break, and power was cut off,” giving us few specifics. Now, CNN has published a statement from S&C Electric Co, which produced the relay. According to S&C, operators set the device to trip far too low: though no power surge occurred, the electrical load still went over the line, causing the relay to cut power in an attempt to prevent damage.

“We have determined that if higher settings had been applied, the equipment would not have disconnected the power,” said company vice president Michael Edmonds. Entergy didn’t confirm this, but it agreed that “one relay functioned as expected and the other relay did not” during the Super Bowl. The relay, which was turned on in late December 2012, has now been removed.

In the second year the Super Bowl has been streamed online, viewership has grown sharply — even if it’s still barely a blip compared to traditional TV viewership. According to CBS, its stream of Super Bowl XLVII garnered 3 million unique viewers, compared to the 2.1 million that NBC reported last year. Unsurprisingly, CBS says this is the largest audience the CBS Sports site has ever seen, and it’s a significant number for any single streamed event.

The Olympics, one of the biggest live viewing opportunities, had 31.5 unique computer-based online viewers in the first week of its events — with the most popular individual events garnering around a million (non-unique) streams apiece — but it’s difficult to directly compare it to other streams, both because it’s a protracted global competition and since most events were limited to cable or satellite subscribers. What is clear, however, is that Super Bowl viewership is still overwhelmingly offline. 164.1 million people overall (another Super Bowl record) watched all or part of the game, according to CBS’ estimates.

If you were one of the viewers who helped make last night’s Super Bowl among the most-watched television events in history, you may not have spent much time worrying about the players’ safety. But if so, the NFL wanted to make sure you knew it shares your concern. As part of a long-running effort, the league ran several ads on the topic, the longest of which recapped a century of safety advances. As SB Nation’s Jon Bois explained, the spot alludes to rule changes from the elimination of “flying wedge” blocking formations to the prohibition on horse-collar tackles. Unsurprisingly, though, the commercial emphasized the evolution of the football helmet, from a thin piece of leather to today’s advanced plastic shells, complete with face guard. And while the NFL and its partners continue to improve safety — from rule changes to high-tech devices like injury-detecting cameras — the helmet has taken center stage. In fact, a safer helmet has become football’s Holy Grail.

In the wake of such high-profile tragedies, the NFL — along with football fans, players, and coaches everywhere — has had to face the realization that what used to be called “bell ringers” are in fact serious brain injuries. Football, in other words, now has to understand the brain. Football has to get smarter.

“Can you take a picture of us?”

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that while I was in New Orleans this past week, I’d quite possibly be a millionaire. As hundreds of thousands of people converged on the Big Easy for the incredible back-to-back combination that is the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, everyone wanted to document their trip. With good reason, too: the Super Bowl is a spectacle that must be seen to be believed.

The Super Bowl, America’s annual celebration of the gridiron game, tends to be the most expensive day on any advertiser’s calendar. Or maybe not. Oreo Cookies took a novel approach to its marketing during the big game last night by keeping its advertising team in the office, ready to respond to any unusual events during the match. Such an opportunity arose when the power inside New Orleans’ Superdome went out, and the marketing minds quickly set to work on producing a poster ad for their product that played off that anomalous incident. After only a brief time, Oreo’s Twitter account was up and tweeting the “You can still dunk in the dark” image, which resonated with Twitter users and has so far resulted in more than 14,000 retweets.

Comparing that sort of social promotion to the widespread awareness that results from buying multimillion-dollar TV spots during half-time may be hard to do, but there’s no denying that Oreo got a lot of value for its money by just keeping on its toes and reacting swiftly. Having its ad agency and a few responsible execs around during the game proved to be enough to generate an enormous deal of social buzz.

There are few things that social networks love more than rounding up the chatter surrounding a big event, and the Super Bowl is certainly no exception. Twitter, Facebook, and Google have pulled together the top searches, tweets, and coversation-starting moments of the “big game,” and what’s surprising is the variance in trends across different networks. On Twitter, the unexpected power outage generated the highest volume of tweets during the game itself — more than 231,000 tweets per minute (TPM). Ranking second was Jacoby Jones’ 109-yard kickoff return near the beginning of the second half; it generated 185,000 TPM. Just trailing that for third place was the actual conclusion of the game, which generated 183,000 TPM.

However, Beyonce’s halftime show outshined any on-the-field moments, at least for Twitter users — the conclusion of her show generated 268,000 TPM, far surpassing any in-game play or moment. Surprisingly, Facebook tracked more keywords relating to Baltimore’s win than Beyonce’s show, which ranked second on Facebook’s top moments of the Super Bowl. Rounding out the top three was the blackout, while Jones’ touchdown ranked as the top single play and was fourth overall on Facebook’s list.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or purposefully avoiding anything to do with last night’s Super Bowl, you’re likely aware that power went out in half of the Mercedes Benz Superdome just after the start of the third quarter last night. The outage was enough to halt gameplay for over a half an hour while officials triaged and resolved the problem and got the lights back on. It would be fairly safe to assume that the power outage caused a lot of people grief, especially those that are in charge of putting on one of the biggest television productions of the year. But if CBS’s video evidence of the NFL’s control room captured when the blackout happened is any guideline, it seems that most people in charge kept a cool head and went about their jobs in getting the power restored as quickly as possible. Fortunately for the broadcaster, there was power available to its cameras, so it was able to keep recording while the event unfolded. You can see all of the lack of panic and calm executives in the video below.

Marvel Studios may have locked up a product placement deal for Iron Man 3 with China’s TCL, but that doesn’t mean that the studio is ignoring traditional, all-American promotion. Take the new 30-second Super Bowl spot, for example, where Tony Stark plucks falling passengers out of the sky in the aftermath of an air disaster.

The video below is an extended version which mixes the new footage with some that’s been seen previously, as well as an intro where — true to the occasion — Robert Downey Jr. attempts to run down the clock. Iron Man 3 will be out in theaters on May 3rd.

The Star Trek Into Darkness Super Bowl trailer has more going on than just Benedict Cumberbatch — as CNET points out, it features the first example we’ve seen of a custom Appstore.com short link. Apple enabled this functionality for iOS developers a few days ago, and it allows for a more convenient URL than the previous links. For example, the Star Trek app can be accessed at AppStore.com/StarTrekApp, whereas before it would have had to be https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-trek-app/id588255788?mt=8. Appstore.com itself, however, doesn’t do anything beyond launching the App Store in iTunes.

Did you feel that? Half the power at the New Orleans Superdome just went out, and the Super Bowl is on hold. The Superdome’s energy provider, Entergy New Orleans, says that the issue is “in the customer’s side,” but it’s not clear yet how that will impact recovery. As ESPN reports, police officials said that too much electricity was being sent to the Superdome, causing a surge. Also speaking to police officials, ABC News reports that there’s no obvious sign of foul play. The outage lasted for more than 30 minutes, and is an unusual interruption for an event with such high production values.

Our own David Pierce is on the ground at the Super Bowl, and he tells us that while it’s “chaos here,” that there’s no panic — spectators started doing the wave when the lights went out. He says that things went dark suddenly, and that while many things have power, some are still out of business: including elevators and closed-circuit televisions.

BlackBerry has just unveiled its Super Bowl ad — arguably the company’s first real mainstream debut for BlackBerry 10 following its launch event — but for some reason it’s all about what its new Z10 handset “can’t” do. (For instance, the BlackBerry Z10 can’t turn an out-of-control truck into a pile of rubber duckies.) That’s a curious strategy for a company that just rebranded itself last week, and that needs to successfully win back the high-end smartphone market in the US and other regions where Apple and Google have dominated for years. In a phone conversation with The Verge, BlackBerry Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben says the new Super Bowl ad “shows some swagger. It’s cutting edge, it shows self-confidence. It fits with the introduction of the product.” It’s just hard to see how you can introduce a new product without covering a single feature.

The Super Bowl spot is only a one-time ad, which will be replaced by the company’s new “Keep Moving” advertising campaign. Boulben says that campaign, launching tomorrow in Canada and in March in the US, is more focused on the “end user.” We previewed a 60-second Keep Moving ad, which featured a side-scrolling view of people moving through different variations on work and play: a nod to the company’s enterprise-focused heritage. Boulben says that you can’t separate the employee from the person, and that the company wants to “show the end user that BlackBerry 10 has been designed to make their lives easier.” Unlike the Super Bowl ad, these ads will highlight BlackBerry 10’s features, including its TimeShift camera mode.

You love Star Trek. You love Benedict Cumberbatch. And you’ll love this new teaser for J.J. Abrams’ next sci-fi epic, Star Trek Into Darkness. Enjoy.

Peter Read Miller’s been to so many Super Bowls that he can’t even remember exactly how many. “I think this is 38,” the long-time Sports Illustrated staff photographer told me. “I said 34 the other day, and then I re-counted for someone else who was asking, and I think this is 38.” 38 Super Bowl Sundays he’s spent crouched in the end zone or running down the sidelines, shooting everyone from Larry Csonka to Eli Manning with dozens of different cameras in countless different situations. He’s seen four decades of football through his viewfinder.

He certainly remembers the games, too. Even his first Super Bowl, Super Bowl IX in 1974 (which, barring any skipped years, would in fact make this Miller’s 38th Super Bowl), brings back clear memories. “This was a cold, wet day at Tulane Stadium. The Steelers played the Vikings — beat ‘em. I’d been shooting for the NFL for maybe a year or two, and they said ‘well, if you can get a ticket, we’ll get you in.’ And somehow or other — God knows, with some credit card fraud or something — I got myself here.” Miller was shooting on spec, and said only that “I got some pictures” from that first game. He didn’t get the one iconic shot, the photo to perfectly encapsulate the game, but he quickly learned that it doesn’t always work out that way. David Boss, a celebrated NFL photographer and a mentor to Miller, told him “you just gotta shoot your game.”

Whether you’re a die-hard fan or aren’t even sure which teams will be playing on Sunday (Google tells me it’s the Ravens and the 49ers, who I understand both play football), Super Bowl commercials are an integral part of both the game and American culture. The Super Bowl is perhaps the only time of the year when advertising is elevated en masse to popular entertainment, and while sports in general have proved a sticking point for streaming TV, the commercials themselves can be found right here online.

For the past several years, Hulu has offered access to Super Bowl ads as they air or are posted. Though it’s not hard to find individual commercials on, say, YouTube, this both collects everything in one place and lets you browse previous years. We’ve already picked out a few of the most interesting pieces of product-selling artistic ephemera, and unlike some advertisers, neither we nor Hulu have to stick to calling it the “Big Game” this weekend.

Statistician Nate Silver knows numbers, and in a piece in the New York Times he’s decided to put that skill to excellent use — predicting the Super Bowl. Historically it’s great defensive teams that have a better record in the big game, but in the case of this year’s Super Bowl the San Francisco 49ers happen to be statistically better than the Baltimore Ravens on both sides of the ball. “There isn’t much to recommend the Ravens,” Silver writes, though he points out that Baltimore is superior when it comes to special teams. Check out the piece in full to see his methods, and then watch the game later today to see how his prediction pans out — and be sure to stick around for the commercials.

Samsung just released its two minute Super Bowl commercial set to air during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s big game. The full ad continues with the same rapid-fire Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd repartee that we saw in the teaser a few days ago. According to Samsung, the 120-second Next Big Thing advertisement is directed by Jon Favreau, the stoutly actor who first found fame with Swingers before breaking out as a director and producer for the Iron Man franchise. Factor in Bob Odenkirk and that’s a lot of expensive A-list Hollywood talent featured in a television pitch.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that a single 30-second Super Bowl spot sells for about $3.8 million, up from $3.5 million last year. That makes this commercial worth about $15.2 million to CBS Corp’s CBS network. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the ad is for the Samsung Galaxy brand — the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy Note 10.1 do make cameo appearances but come off as mere product placements in a humorous Rogen-Rudd production.

As you sit down to watch the Super Bowl with your family and friends, take a moment to think of those doing more or less the same thing hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface. NASA has confirmed to Space.com that the six astronauts currently on board the International Space Station will indeed get to watch the game; Mission Control made a point of asking the crew on Friday if they wanted it broadcast to them. It’s not an unusual event for the astronauts — they were able to watch the Olympic Games last summer, for example — but it’s a comforting reminder that they’re not completely cut off from the world. Even if we doubt that the ISS has an 85-inch 4K TV set up.

Last year, in the most important moment of the most important game of his career, Kyle Williams screwed up. The San Francisco 49ers’ punt returner came up to try and field a short kick from New York Giants punter Steve Weatherford, but at the last minute decided not to even try. He backed off, but the football bounced haphazardly in his direction anyway. It grazed his right knee, and became a live fumble; the Giants recovered it, and quickly scored a touchdown. The Giants, of course, won the game in overtime, and two weeks later won the Super Bowl.

Except the ball didn’t hit Kyle Williams’ knee. Or maybe it did. Even now, after countless viewings and endless expert analysis, no one really knows for sure. And Ken Aagaard, EVP of Operations at CBS, wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again. “I said to myself right then,” Aagard told me, “‘I wonder if we can use these new 4K cameras to make this better.’”

Last year Samsung took a shot at Apple with a Super Bowl ad for the Galaxy Note, and now the company has debuted a new spot that riffs on the licensing restrictions of the big game itself. In the commercial, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd play two writers pitching ideas for a Samsung Super Bowl commercial — to Mr. Show and Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk, no less. The joke is that every single time the pair try to mention the Super Bowl itself — or any of the team names — Odenkirk has to cut them off because the names are trademarked.

Super Bowl commercials have a tradition of swapping out nondescript team jerseys or generic phrases like “the big game” in lieu of the trademarked names because doing so would cost money; Samsung would have to pay a fee if it wanted to actually use the licensed name “Baltimore Ravens” or “San Francisco 49ers” in its commercial. Whether you take the spot as a dig at the NFL, the litigious behavior of some of Samsung’s competitors, or the company simply tiptoeing up to the line of what it can get away with, it’s nevertheless an opportunity to watch three great comedians do what they do best.

The ethics of domestic drone use may not be sorted out, but police and other officials aren’t waiting around to deploy them in the field — and there are few fields more mainstream than the one at the Super Bowl. According to a report from The Lens, New Orleans city officials wanted to use a US Department of Homeland Security drone to monitor crowds at Super Bowl XLVII in February, but canceled the plans recently for unspecified reasons. A city spokesperson told The Lens that it will instead be provided with a manned helicopter with a camera, and that “the city learned by phone” about the switch — indicating that the change may have been made unilaterally by Homeland Security.

The Lens reports that New Orleans officials have been very interested in acquiring drone tech. City officials reportedly met twice recently with a local drone manufacturer, and attempted to buy an unmanned aerial drone with a federal grant for port security. Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that while DHS may have backtracked on the Super Bowl drone, it’s not because it’s averse to drones: the agency launched a program earlier this year to speed up the adoption of drones by local police. The next big championship game may not have UAVs flying overhead, but it’s not for a lack of trying.