Bob Horowitz, "Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials" and "The Singing Bee" executive producer: Mr. Media Interview, Part 2 (Return to Part 1)
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Have you already seen 2008’s Super Bowl spots? Are you privy to those?

BOB HOROWITZ: We’ve seen some of them, the GoDaddy spots. We’ve seen one of the Budweiser spots where the Clydesdale and the Dalmatian, the dog, are training together. Some of them we have seen. You’ll have to watch the show to see cause it’s embargoed until tomorrow night, but the Budweiser one is very good.

ANDELMAN: Do celebs have any edge over talking animals?



HOROWITZ: No, I don’t think so. We talked about the Kevin Federline spot. I think that was great, right? Then you remember the Budweiser spot with the chimp that was talking, right? That’s great. I really don’t think that it really, really matters. It’s just all about that which is clever. Again, go back to your “Saturday Night Live” analogy: they always have the guest star on “Saturday Night Live.” The skit is funny, or it’s not, really having nothing to do with whether the star that night is in that skit. Sometimes when they’re the main character, and they nail it, it’s really, really funny. And that would be the equivalent of a Super Bowl spot that has marquee talent doing the commercial, Kevin Federline, right? And the Kevin Federline Super Bowl spot could be “Saturday Night Live.” But then again, you could see the “Saturday Night Live” skit in a “Saturday Night Live” show that just happened to not have the star as the main character there, and it was every bit as funny if not more funny. It’s just entertaining. It really depends.

ANDELMAN: Wasn’t your co-host, Daisy Fuentes, in a Super Bowl commercial some time back?

HOROWITZ: Oh my God. You’re asking a question there that I don’t think is the case, but I don’t know that answer. I don’t think so, but maybe.

ANDELMAN: Let’s get our crack research team working on that. Maybe somebody can get back to us.

HOROWITZ: What’s your favorite spot? What’s your favorite commercial?

ANDELMAN: I’ve always liked Spuds McKenzie.

HOROWITZ: Right.

ANDELMAN: I’ve always liked the animals. I like the horse kicking a field goal. I don’t know why.

HOROWITZ: You mean the one with “I think they should’ve gone for two”?

ANDELMAN: Right, right.

HOROWITZ: Right.

ANDELMAN: I know what I didn’t like. It was actually a FedEx spot, which I just thought was dumb, was the cavemen.

HOROWITZ: Yep.

ANDELMAN: Where he steps outside and gets squashed by the dinosaur.

HOROWITZ: He kicks the dog and then gets stepped on, right.

ANDELMAN: Yeah.

HOROWITZ: That scores pretty well in our show.

ANDELMAN: Does it really?

HOROWITZ: Hint, hint. Yep.

ANDELMAN: That one just didn’t work so much for me.



HOROWITZ: I have to say I have to agree with you that it has scored well over the years, but I don’t necessarily like it. Do you remember the Chevy Chase one, the one for potato chips, where they stopped him in the middle of the commercial and he got cancelled?

ANDELMAN: I’m thinking about that now that you mention it, yeah.

HOROWITZ: That was a great one, too.

ANDELMAN: Do you feel at all guilty creating a show in which all the programming is commercials and the content is then surrounded by more commercials?

HOROWITZ: No, because if you didn’t have the commercials in the Super Bowl game, the rating would go down. I’d argue that to my grave. That, I believe, is a truth so why then is that the case? Because they’re entertaining. So to build a show around entertaining content that just happens to be old commercials surrounded by natural commercial breaks, it is what it is. I can’t say anything more about it than that, and I think that is the case. You have to think of them as little vignettes a la “Saturday Night Live” that they go on the air to sell, right, to entertain and sell, and then they walk off to become content in a primetime CBS Super Bowl commercial show. That’s their life after first air.





ANDELMAN: Do the brands whose commercials you run from past years, do they benefit? And I’m sure the answer to this is no, but do they ever pay anything for this new exposure?

HOROWITZ: No, and in fact, it’s to the contrary. When I first came up with doing the show and we sold it to CBS, people said, “Whoa, you guys must be making a lot of money because this is all free.” Well, what people don’t necessarily understand is that when the company gives you the right to run a commercial, there are all the clearance costs, which is the music, the talent, the director, all the actors, everybody that’s involved. And the clearances to clear the spots on our one-hour CBS primetime show is upwards of $200 grand. We’re sitting there saying “Do we put in the Budweiser spot?” “You know the Budweiser spot’s gonna cost $15,000 to run,” because there is a budget. But the companies, they gladly like to see you run something. We had on for numbers of years the Terry Tate Reebok spot, and then the Reebok and Terry Tate relationship kind of went sideways. You haven’t seen that on the air in our show, and yet, I think that’s a great spot.

ANDELMAN: Have any of the brands, any of the companies, ever declined to participate or release their ads?

HOROWITZ: Not really, no. No, no.

ANDELMAN: None that you really felt you had to have.

HOROWITZ: No. Exactly. Any of the ones that were important we’ve gotten.

ANDELMAN: Let’s get a nice word in for your hosts. Daisy Fuentes and Jim Nantz, have they done this special before?



HOROWITZ: Yes, yes, for a couple years. They did it last year. They did it this year. It’s a great complement because Jim hosts the show, will host the show from the stadium where the Super Bowl is played, and so he is the staple to give you the countdown. And then this year, we have Daisy at our own Super Bowl party where she’ll be with fans and some guests, etc., and they’ll go back and forth. It adds a little entertainment value besides just seeing two people standing next to each other.

ANDELMAN: I want to change gears since we have you here. You have another little program that’s been a bit of a hit, “The Singing Bee.” Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be and where the future for that show is?

HOROWITZ: Very similar to “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials,” which was an observation of human behavior, this one was observation walking down the street, again, in New York City, of a marquee that was for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the musical. Spelling Bee, the musical? Well, why can’t there be “Singing Bee,” the show? Spelling Bee, they have to spell the words. Sing the words. Okay, lyrics. And like most ideas and what you have do is you have to stop for a while because usually after 24 hours in that incubation period, 99 percent of the ideas you had 24 hours before are terrible.

ANDELMAN: Yes.

HOROWITZ: Because it’s just oh, what was I thinking? But this one, 24 hours later, was, “Hey, that’s a pretty good idea,” so we threw it in the whole development mix, and I spoke to Lewis Fenton, who is our head of development. We got Phil Gurin, a buddy of mine, a longtime friend, to partner and develop with us, and we came up with this variety game show with a great host in Joey Fatone. We’ve done 19 episodes on NBC. It’s now being seen in 35 countries around the world all in, except for Australia, all in native tongue. They do it with their own local songs, and it’s a hit around the world. And here, we plan to have it back on NBC this summer. We’ve done 19 episodes so far. I tend to believe, as does Phil, that we’re more of a summer show than we are of a fall show because I just think it’s summer fun entertainment. And it has proven to be a winner, and we got lucky.

ANDELMAN: That’s amazing that it’s in that many countries. A wild hair becomes a franchise, I guess.

HOROWITZ: Right. Well, everybody sings lyrics that they think they know that they really don’t know. Again, it’s just playing off of human behavior, people singing in the car, those who sing in the shower. It’s just been a big, big hit.

ANDELMAN: Do you have a return date yet?

HOROWITZ: No. That’s what we’re discussing right now with NBC.

ANDELMAN: Okay.

HOROWITZ: Our focus and emphasis right now is on our global shows and our producers that are in Chile and Israel and all around the world, Turkey, Russia. We’re doing 80 episodes in Russia. We were the number one show in Scandinavia. It’s a pretty amazing story.

ANDELMAN: In the NBC edition, will Joey Fatone and the Honey Bees, will they return?

HOROWITZ: Yes, Joey for sure. And I think while the Honey Bees are not the hosts, they are a fun, entertaining side, but all that being said, I think to keep a success going, you always have to zero base and figure out what’s a new, improved thing. You tie it back to what we’ve been discussing, Super Bowl. New England goes on to beat the Giants and are 19 – 0. They’ll have 46 players that will suit up for the game. All 46 players won’t be back the next year because they’ll just do something new and different to try to win again. Phil and I will go back, and we’ll figure out how best to use the Honey Bees, and I can’t see that show without Joey being our host forever. He is so tied to that show and has been such a big part of the success.

ANDELMAN: That guy’s had an interesting career. He’s obviously a boy-band guy, and then he does a dance show. Who would’ve figured? And then now he’s doing this.

HOROWITZ: Right. Pretty unbelievable. Pretty unbelievable. What a ride for him.

ANDELMAN: Were you guys at all competitive in any way with the Fox show, “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”? Did anybody steal from anybody, or was it just one of those strange TV-land coincidences?

HOROWITZ: Well, we sold first. We announced first. We got on the air first.

ANDELMAN: So basically, Bob, you’re saying you were first.

HOROWITZ: We were not second.

ANDELMAN: Okay.

HOROWITZ: I don’t see how people that are first can steal.

© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials. Bob Horowitz, The Singing Bee

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