Ladies and gentlemen, take your places in front of the television next Sunday for Super Bowl XLIV to help NVRC with its annual monitoring of captions on the commercials. This year coverage of the game is being provided by CBS. The official start time is 6 pm on Sunday, February 7, 2010 with kickoff at 6:30 pm.
Why do we target the Super Bowl for this caption monitoring? Because its huge audience attracts many advertisers who pay a very high price for their commercials. Wikipedia says that a 30-second commercial for Super Bowl XLIV will cost $2.8 million. Compared to this, the cost to add captioning is teeny tiny.
We’d like to have several volunteers to help us with the tally, including readers who live in other parts of the country. Some commercials are broadcast nationally while others will vary by region. We’d like to capture both regional and national information.
Commercials you can expect to see no matter where you are watching will include Anheuser- Busch (Go, Clydesdales!), Career Builder, Coca-Cola, Frito-Lay, US Census Bureau, GoDaddy, Paramount Pictures, Homeaway, and Diamond Foods.
HERE’S HOW TO HELP
Send an email with the following information to NVRC!
Let us know, too, if you have problems with captions being missing, garbled, or otherwise funky during the commercials or the game.
I live in ________ (name of city and state).
I watched Super Bowl 2009 on television using (pick one):
– Local broadcast (TV with antenna/rabbit ears)
– Cable TV (include name of cable TV company)
– Satellite TV (include name of satellite TV company)
Super Bowl ads (list in the order seen and note “with CC” or “no CC” and let us know if there were captions that were messed up)
1.
2.
3.
. . .
SAMPLE OF INFORMATION WE NEED::
I live in Rosewood, Maine. I watched the Super Bowl on TV with antenna/rabbit ears. I saw these Super Bowl ads:
1. Tide – Talking Stain – with CC
2. FedEx – Pigeons – with CC
3. E-Trade – Baby – with CC
4. US Government – Drugs – with CC
5. Doritos – Mousetrap – no CC
6. Pepsi – Timberlake – no CC
7. Toyota – Badgers – no CC
8. McDonalds – Ranch BLT – with CC
9. Bud Light – Cheese – no CC
10. E-Trade – Baby 2 – with CC
11. Gatorade – Friend – with CC
12. Careerbuilder – Spider – no CC
13. . . .
NVRC would also like to know what brand of TV you are watching, the model if you know what it is, and whether it’s a digital TV or analog (tube) TV.
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
