Super Bowl’s a TV Turn-On With Promos, Potato Chips

Every year a few people make a big deal about Turn Off TV Day, National TV-Turnoff Week and an inevitable TV boycott called for by some irate group. These campaigns garner media attention but are usually ignored by viewers, lest they miss a crucial episode of “Charmed,” another riveting primary debate or Kobe Bryant’s latest assortment of ill-advised shots.

One annual television ritual observed with remarkable dedication, however, is the Super Bowl--which takes place this Sunday and, if you think about it, serves as a national holiday that might be dubbed Let’s All Blob Out in Front of the TV Day.

Of course, Super Bowl XXXIV has far more promotional resources behind it than Morality in Media--which has cited “the unremitting flow of morally offensive TV programming” as its rationale for Turn Off TV Day--or TV-Free America, whose TV-Turnoff Week encourages people to reduce viewing and try something else, such as speaking to one’s spouse and children over dinner instead of the usual “Shush! Can’t you see Regis is waiting for his final answer?”

In fact, Super Bowl Sunday has expanded far beyond the confines of any mere sports contest, becoming a celebration of television at its most fundamental level--namely, a system for delivering about 130 million consumers to the outstretched arms of national advertisers.

Football becomes an after-thought in the context of this marketing showcase, which is reinforced by countless product tie-ins augmenting those sponsors who will shell out $2 million or more for each 30-second commercial.

Quickly scanning the weekend newspaper coupons one can find dozens of related campaigns, from Pringles potato chips (“Get enough for the second half!”) to something called Lloyd’s Barbecue Bucket (“Great barbecue, no overtime. Perfect for your football parties!”), which sounds like a possible consolation prize for the losing team.

Everything points to the Super Bowl as a not-to-be-missed event, an excuse for one big national party--spread across about 45 million living rooms--with all the nachos and beer we can handle.

Now, if the purity of sport or enjoyment of a good game were really the issue here, the Super Bowl would hardly be the choice around which to structure such a gala. College basketball’s NCAA Final Four, for one, offers far more thrills, and while those Pringles may still be around for the second half, if history holds true any suspense as to who will win could be over long before the dip runs out.

Yet people show up for the Super Bowl by the tens of millions--not necessarily because we all want to, but because the marketing onslaught has convinced us that we should. The day has been set aside, almost by formal decree, for TV viewing--a social get-together where even commercials, for once, must be attentively examined, determining who got their money’s worth and what might be this year’s Apple “1984” spot, the one people will discuss long after the game.

Broadcasters understand this, which is why the networks pay exorbitant sums for the right to televise football and load up promos for their programs, hoping to intrigue millions of hard-to-reach viewers who normally tune in TV only for true happenings of seemingly historic proportion--a Monica Lewinsky interview or Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding Olympic skate-off.

The remarkable thing about the Super Bowl is that it manages to bring such folks back year after year. No amount of disappointment, or crummy games, can undermine television’s day in the sun.

How appropriate, then, that this year’s game will be so utterly Disney-fied--one big song-and-dance show interrupted by football. Airing on ABC, a Walt Disney Co. subsidiary, the festivities include the Smothers Brothers, Tina Turner and Travis Tritt in “Great American Music of the 20th Century,” and that’s just the pregame show.

At halftime, Disney weighs in with Phil Collins (can you feel something from Disney’s “Tarzan” soundtrack in the air tonight?), Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias and Toni Braxton--a greater display of diversity than we’ve seen in any ABC series lately. Titled “Tapestry of Nations,” the show will feature an orchestra and choir. Fortunately, there wasn’t enough time to roll a frozen lake onto the field for “Disney’s The Little Mermaid on Ice.”

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The promotion continues after the game with a new episode of “The Practice,” based on the assumption even a hit Emmy-winning show can always use some additional exposure.

Once upon a time, networks sought to capitalize on the Super Bowl as a launching pad for new series, helping introduce the public to such shows as “The Wonder Years” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.” This practice soured a bit in the 1990s, however, as the short-lived “Grand Slam” (John Schneider and Paul Rodriguez as zany detectives), “Extreme” (James Brolin as head of the Steep Mountain Rescue Group) and “Davis Rules” (Randy Quaid as a principal raising three boys with help from eccentric dad Jonathan Winters) took their place on that coveted platform.

More recently, the networks have decided to offer a proven commodity after the game, rewarding those viewers still able to sit upright with episodes of “Friends,” “The X-Files” and “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

Taken all together, and as Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back,” it is futile to resist. You can bite the bullet, have a beer or chardonnay and watch the game in the company of friends and family, or throw yourself down a big trash chute and hope a ship flies by to rescue you. With the exception perhaps of a few Art Bell listeners, most will opt for a cold one and hope for a close game.

So give in, find a soft place on the couch and celebrate our TV culture on Sunday. Leave the set on till some time after that dreamy Dylan McDermott stops speaking earnestly about how every defendant deserves the right to a vigorous defense. Make fun of the announcers, analyze the commercials, and point out what a dunderhead Madonna was to cancel her pregame performance, missing out on all that free promotion.

After all, it’s kind of nice to see the free-enterprise system clicking on all cylinders, even when you, and millions of your fellow citizens, are ultimately the product that’s being sold.

* Super Bowl XXXIV will be broadcast at 3 p.m. on ABC.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.