As part of its week-long activation for Super Bowl LVIII, Paramount Global took Drew Barrymore, Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition to Las Vegas to shoot shows and segments on the ground before, during and after the big game.
All three CBS Media Ventures-produced shows set up shop in front of the Bellagio fountains to talk football, parties, celebrity, and of course, the Taylor Swift of it all.
“Entertainment Tonight always covers the Super Bowl; traditionally, it’s the highest-rated week of the year for us. And this year, it’s even bigger with Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and Usher as the half-time performance,” Erin Johnson, executive producer of Entertainment Tonight, said.
CBS Sports, CBS Mornings and Drew Barrymore shared CBS’ main stage outside of the Bellagio while Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition and CBS’ The Talk all shot episodes from another near-by space.
“The stage we were on had that iconic CBS Sports desk. We put our graphics in there and brought all of our props and everything in,” said Jason Kurtz, executive producer of Drew Barrymore.
Anchors Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner began hosting Entertainment Tonight in front of the Bellagio fountains on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and the show has scored interviews with half-time performer Usher as well as The Rock and Justin Hartley, whose new show, Tracker, will premiere right after Super Bowl LVIII on CBS.
“We love taking the show on the road,” Johnson said. “Traveling the show has been a big priority of mine since I began executive producing the show in 2019. It brings a different energy to what we’re doing. Entertainment is in the name – we like to be on location.”
Keeping the corporate synergy alive, Barrymore appeared on both ET and Inside Edition. She even made a little news on ET, talking about how she’s always texting Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston about doing a movie together.
“We’re excited for people to check out our Las Vegas residency this week. We’re talking to lots of stars – we have shoots scheduled from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. as we cover all of the star-studded parties. That content will play on the show and online all week,” Johnson said.
Similarly, Inside Edition is producing shows from Vegas on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with Deborah Norville anchoring at the Bellagio set and Lisa Guerrero, who reports Inside Edition’s investigative stories, in the field. Besides her work with IE, Guerrero formerly worked as an NFL sideline reporter for ABC News and was a former NFL cheerleader, so “she knows football,” Inside Edition executive producer Charles Lachman said.
Inside Edition’s special Super Bowl LVIII correspondent this year is Wheel of Fortune’s Maggie Sajak, daughter of Wheel host Pat Sajak. Previously, Simone Biles, Gabrielle Douglas and Nancy Kerrigan have joined the show in this role.
“Maggie’s adding a lot of her personality and charm to our coverage. We have a dynamic trio of on-air personalities covering this,” Lachman said.
Just as it is for ET, the Super Bowl tends to be one of Inside Edition’s highest-rated weeks so the show pays a lot of attention to it.
“We’re known for our spin on things; we call it the Inside Edition take,” Lachman said. “We really focus on what’s happening behind the scenes. We really want to deliver what people haven’t already seen.”
Continuing with the cross-promotion, Norville made her way over to CBS Mornings where she spoke with Norah O’Donnell, and Barrymore joined Inside Edition to chat with Norville.
As for Drew Barrymore, the talker shot two half-hour episodes in Las Vegas on Wednesday, and those are airing on Thursday and Friday. Drew Barrymore airs each day as two half-hours so the second half-hour of each day was pre-taped in New York with relevant features such as cooking, tail-gating and games.
Barrymore’s guests in Vegas are Boomer Esiasan and Greg Gianotti of WFAN’s morning drive time sports radio program, “Boomer & Gio,” on Thursday, and CBS Sports’ NFL broadcasters Tracy Wilson and Tony Romo on Friday.
“We’ve been able to combine our pop-culture-driven Drews News with the sports of it all,” Kurtz said. “Pop culture and celebrity is a lot of what the Super Bowl is.”
All three EPs said they loved the experience of being live on the ground in Las Vegas with their peers.
“This experience has been amazing and it’s been really great to collaborate with all of the other executive producers,” Kurtz said. “With all of the stages on top of each other, it’s been easy to be nimble.”
