NBC understands Super Bowl audience a different animal

NBC would like to treat Super Bowl XLIX like any other Sunday broadcast.

Except, of course, for there being more cameras, more story lines, more technology and about 30 million more viewers.

This will be NBC's 18th Super Bowl broadcast. Fred Gaudelli, who will produce the broadcast, is doing his fifth Super Bowl alongside director Drew Esocoff.

So Gaudelli is certainly aware of expectations being ratcheted up.

"We do a pretty big show every single Sunday night," Gaudelli says. "It has a lot of equipment, it has a huge audience — obviously a fraction of what we'll have Super Bowl Sunday — but we're doing a big game with a lot of resources and facilities. So we start with that."

NFL DRAFT HUB: Latest NFL Draft mock drafts, news, live picks, grades and analysis.

And then he'll build from there.

"Let's add elements that would help us have better views or better looks at things," Gaudelli says. "We put four cameras on the goal line; we put cameras down the sidelines; we put cameras on the end lines. So now we have the boundaries of the football field pretty secure and feel that if any play is affected by anything between those lines we have great angles and great looks at those particular plays.

"And then we say, 'What can we do for some of the human element, some of the drama?'

"We add hand-held cameras for the bench areas. We add some additional cameras to 'iso' specific positions," he says. "Let's make sure we can cover everything that is going to happen on the field as best as humanly possible.

"Then let's also add to our storytelling unit and be able to tell better stories, be better able to show emotion. Maybe a little bit more than we would on a Sunday night."

Bob Costas will be hosting his seventh Super Bowl, while play-by-play announcer Al Michaels is doing is ninth. His partner, analyst Cris Collinsworth, is doing his third Super Bowl, as is sideline reporter Michele Tafoya.

Super Bowl winners Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison and Hines Ward will be sprinkled in on the coverage, along with Peter King, Doug Flutie and Randy Moss.

However, NBC is cognizant that the non-football fan will heavily outnumber an audience that might care as much about Katy Perry at halftime, and the commercials during the game, as they do with the play on the field.

"You want to do something for them. And you are certainly acknowledging that most of the audience is not a football fan on this day or else we'd be having 50 million people for every NFL game there is," Gaudelli says. "Look, we don't want to do anything to insult the hard-core or avid fan.

"But you know you have people watching who don't watch all year long."

So he wants to give them something to hang on to and says, "That is where the stories come in. That is where the personalities of the players come in. That's where you try to develop things of that nature to give those people a reason to keep watching and hopefully enjoy what they're watching."

But while all the toys and talent will be available for the game, it will be a feel thing as to whether all or some of them are used.

"If it's a crucial play and you're off telling a story, that's probably not the right decision," Gaudelli says.

"If it's a nondescript play that really has no bearing either way and you're digging deeper into the minutiae when you could be maybe bringing out the personality of someone or talking about something historical, then that's probably an equal mistake. We just try to cover the game as well as we can.

"It is funny when you talk to the people in the city that lost the Super Bowl. They are going to have a much different colored view of the people who live in the city that won the Super Bowl.

"But the person in this particular case, the one in Middle America, did they enjoy the experience? Did they have their questions answered? Was every call that was a defining call in the game supported by the pictures on television? Did they enjoy the announcers?

"Those are the things that would mean the most to me."

PHOTOS: One great photo from every Super Bowl in history