One of the most celebrity-studded ads in the Super Bowl won’t be from the Big Game’s usual roster of Madison Avenue moguls.
Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Dan Aykroyd and a bevy of other notables are set to appear in a promo for Fox Nation, suggesting that the subscription-based streaming service is one of the more important business initiatives for Fox Corporation, the parent company of the Fox broadcast network, which will televise Super Bowl LVII this Sunday, and Fox News Media, which operates the broadband outlet.
The company that owns the TV network broadcasting the Super Bowl gets to use several minutes of promo time each year to spotlight its own wares. Every year, Fox, NBC or CBS — the three companies air the Super Bowl in a regular rotation — pick new programs, divisions, and media platforms to highlight throughout the day, hoping to take advantage of the outsize audience expected to tune in,.
A 15-second and 30-second promo for Fox Nation calls attention to a documentary series about Yellowstone National Park hosted by Kevin Costner, and a separate program centered on historic battles in the U.S., hosted by actor Kelsey Grammer. Fox Nation’s revival of “Cops” is included, as is “Duck Family Treasure,” a reality series focused by the famous Robertson family from “Duck Dynasty.”
Viewers may also see a “Saturday Night Live” reunion of sorts. Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, JonLovitz,KevinNealonandGeorge Wendtwill appear in the new series, “A History of the World in Six Glasses,” a look at the evolution of beer, spirits, coffee, tea and soda. All the actors turn up in the promo.
Fox Nation will also tout a new comedy showcase for Roseanne Barr, set to launch the day after the Super Bowl. A clip from her upcoming special, “Roseanne Barr: Cancel This,” shows her asking: “Has anybody else been fired recently?” Barr was pushed out from the revival of her sitcom, “Roseanne,” after posting a series of offensive, racially insensitive tweets that made staying in business with her a difficult prospect for ABC ,the network that shows the series, now called “The Conners.”
This isn’t Fox Nation’s first Super Bowl appearance. In 2020, viewers saw a promo in which a harried Fox News producer runs into a nearby green room, only to find personalities from Fox Nation programs waiting inside.
Originally launched as a means of giving subscribers to Fox News additional content from the cable-news outlet’s many personalities, Fox Nation has evolved into a service that is digging deeper into entertainment. The service has invested in lifestyle programming, not just the red-meat political opinions that seem to attract many of the cable outlet’s die-hards.
