It’s the most wonderful time of year for people who love eating pizza and wings and drinking beer. That’s right, it’s Super Bowl Sunday. A day when 100 million+ people sit down to watch a little bit of football and a lot of advertisements—some funnier than others.
Sandwiched in between all that goodness is a halftime show that, more often than not, represents one of the biggest pop culture moments of the year. Last year was an especially massive event, with nearly 130 million people watching Usher perform at the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show.
If that seems like a mind-blowing number of people, that’s because it is. It’s the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance ever and one of the most-watched television programs, period—right up there with the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
Believe it or not, though, the Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t always this big of a deal. It wasn’t even that long ago that the show was so uneventful that television networks didn’t even bother to broadcast it in its entirety.
But when exactly did the Super Bowl halftime show become the ratings juggernaut that it is today? That answer isn’t as simple as you might think.
What Year Did the Super Bowl Halftime Show Become So Huge?
One thing is for sure, the first-ever Super Bowl halftime show in 1967 wasn’t exactly the start of something special. Headlined by Al Hirt, and the marching bands from The University of Arizona and Grambling College, the show summed up what the early versions of the halftime show looked like—kind of boring.
That’s right. Think lots of marching bands, smaller musical acts performing medleys, and even some interpretive dancing. Essentially, the Super Bowl halftime show used to look a lot like something you’d see during halftime at your local high school football game, or perhaps your middle school talent show.
Then 1992 happened. That year, the big game was broadcast by CBS. In a bit of gamesmanship, rival network Fox decided to air some alternative programming during the halftime show. They aired a special edition of In Living Color that completely stole the show—as well as tens of millions of viewers from CBS.
Not to be sacked again, CBS decided to come back in 1993 with a show so special that nothing any other network could throw on the air would be able to rival it. And there was only one person whose name was big enough for a marquee of that size: Michael Jackson.
Simply put, the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show was the birth of a modern spectacle. It didn’t just resemble the Super Bowl halftime show we know today, it completely changed the game (pun intended) and created the blueprint we’ve been following for the past three decades. With that in mind, following The King of Pop was no easy task.
Sure, plenty of notable names performed right after Jackson did in 1993. Icons of the music industry like Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, and Jewel all gave their best efforts. But it took nearly a decade before the show took another step in its evolution. And that evolution saw the show become a big deal every year, leaving the patchy, hit-or-miss pattern of the past behind.
In 2001, MTV took over the production responsibilities for the halftime show. MTV, arguably the biggest driver in pop culture at the time, especially youth culture, decided to put its stamp on the show by bringing in the youngest, hottest acts of the time.
Any parent (or anyone who’s ever spent more than five minutes with a kid) will tell you that kids are messy. And to the surprise of no one, the youngsters who took the stage in the coming years created quite a few messes—but with the chaos came all the buzz and publicity the NFL could ever want.
Obviously, we can’t talk about Super Bowl halftime shows without mentioning 2004. It’s been over 20 years and somehow (sadly), Kid Rock and P. Diddy are the most relevant acts from this performance today. But it was Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake who made this the most memorable show in Super Bowl history.
I don’t have to even tell you what happened because you already know. That’s how massive this moment was. It was so big that it became what was arguably the first-ever viral moment. “Janet Jackson” and “Super Bowl halftime” were, at the time, the most searched terms in one day ever.
The internet was buzzing so loudly about Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction that a couple of people working for PayPal were inspired to invent something that made it easier to share video clips like the one everyone was trying to find at the time. That’s right, we got YouTube because of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson.
The cherry on top of the shit sundae was the talented Janet Jackson was blacklisted from the music industry for “Nipplegate,” meanwhile Timberlake headlined the halftime show again in 2018—and performed the same song from that infamous moment in 2004 with a smile on his face.
It’s safe to say that, for the last 20 years, the NFL has toed the line between trying to create massive television moments while also not accidentally recreating what happened in 2004. They haven’t always been successful (a subjective statement), but they’ve never lost that ensuing buzz. Everyone has had something to say about the Super Bowl halftime show the following Monday morning at work ever since.
And everyone having something to say about the Super Bowl halftime show, because everyone watched it, is all television networks want in the end anyway, right?
The post When Did the Super Bowl Halftime Show Become a Big Deal? appeared first on VICE.
