ITEM ONE:

L.A. LOVES A PARADE…AND NFL TELECASTS

Interest in the NFL continues to be strong in Los Angeles despite the absence of an NFL team.  There has not been NFL football played in Los Angeles since 1994.  Yet, in the TV rating week of December 30-January 5, the top-rated program in the Los Angeles market was the 49ers-Giants Wild Card game of January 5 (19.9 rating).  In fact, three of the top four TV programs in L.A. last week were NFL game telecasts.    No. 2 was the Tournament of Roses parade; No. 3, the Atlanta-Green Bay Wild Card; and No. 4, the Cleveland-Pittsburgh Wild Card.  In the rest of the country, one NFL game telecast or another ranked No. 1 against all programming for the week in all 30 NFL home markets.  

ITEM TWO:

ADVERTISERS: SUPER BOWL THE BIGGEST EVENT

It’s called “Big Event” advertising – attaching your product to that one boffo event or program that excites the whole country.  And this year, once again, say advertisers, the Super Bowl is the biggest of the big.  “It’s good to be in big event television right now,” says ED ERHARDT, president for customer marketing and sales at ABC Sports, which will televise Super Bowl XXXVII on January 26.  “Companies now think of Super Bowl as a marketing platform as opposed to a place where they just run a spot.”  Such companies as FedEx, Visa and Pepsi-Cola have again prepared special commercials for the game.  “We’re back in the big game, and it’s not a surprise,” says DAVE DE CECCO, a Pepsi spokesman.  “It’s our 18th straight year.”  The New York Times, in a recent column on the power of Super Bowl to pull advertisers and viewers, called the game a “midwinter national holiday celebrated by gathering around the electronic hearth.”

ITEM THREE:

LA MIRADA, THANKS TO NFL, GETS A NEW FIELD

San Diego, site of Super Bowl XXXVII, has been chosen by Hispanic magazine as the best city in the U.S. for Hispanics to live.  The NFL will be serving that community in numerous ways in the weeks leading up to the game.  One of the most important will occur at an elementary school in the southernmost part of the city.  The NFL, through its Community Football Fields Program, has granted $100,000 to the LaMirada Elementary School in San Ysidro to build a new natural turf football field with an irrigation system and portable goal posts.  Groundbreaking will take place during Super Bowl week.  San Ysidro has faced an increase in juvenile delinquency in after-school hours.  “The new field will definitely ensure that our youth have a more productive alternative in which to channel their energies,” says JOE HORIYE, the program director for San Diego’s Local Initiative Support Corporation.  “It’s something that obviously is important to the local community.”