FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 30th, 2012
CNBC’s Darren Rovell to Host NBC Sports’ Post-Super Bowl Hangout on Google+
NEW YORK – Jan. 30, 2012 — CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell will serve as host and industry expert for a NBC Sports Google+ Hangout discussion of Super Bowl commercials on Monday, Feb. 6. During the Hangout, Rovell will review the previous day’s Super Bowl commercials, dissect the talk around the ads, and interact with fans to find out what commercials worked best.
“The day after the Super Bowl is when people head back to their office water coolers to discuss what they loved and what they didn’t’,” Rovell said. “Our conversation is about taking all those water cooler conversations and bringing it to a national, digital stage.”
On Friday evening, Feb. 17 during his NBC Sports Network show CNBC SportsBiz: Game On, Rovell will reveal the most popular Super Bowl commercial as selected by YouTube Ad Blitz voters.
The Hangout is the second piece of an NBC Sports collaboration with YouTube and its Super Bowl Ad Blitz, the premier online gallery of Super Bowl commercials. The Super Bowl is annually the biggest single day of the year for advertisers, commanding the attention of millions of Americans tuned in to watch the game as well as the TV commercials. Super Bowl XLVI between the New York Giants and New England Patriots will be broadcast on NBC on Sunday, Feb. 5.
As part of the agreement, NBC will promote Ad Blitz and Rovell’s Google+ Hangout during its pre-game coverage and YouTube will offer weekend-long online promotion of NBC’s Super Bowl XLVI coverage. This marks the first time in the five-year history of the YouTube Ad Blitz that YouTube has partnered with the Super Bowl network broadcaster.
Rovell, CNBC’s Sports Business Reporter, is responsible for both analyzing and reporting on the sports business world on all of CNBC’s programming. In addition, he is the author of the “Sports Biz” blog on CNBC.com and is very involved in social media with more than 173,000 people following his @darrenrovell feed.
Google+ has already conducted several high profile Hangouts including ones hosted by The Dalai Lama, will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas and coming Jan 30th President Obama.
The YouTube Ad Blitz program is a popular, online and interactive gallery of Super Bowl commercials that allows users to view the commercials and vote on the top ads of the Super Bowl on laptops, mobile phones, or tablets. Last year Ad Blitz generated 93M video views of Super Bowl commercials. The Ad Blitz gallery will be hosted on NBCSports.com and the YouTube Ad Blitz Channel.
