(Trigger Warning: The following essay addresses topics in a blunt and candid way, that may make snowflakes cry.)
A recent essay laments the cultural decay of America, as exemplified by the Super Bowl halftime shows in recent years. Conservatives generally don’t like them, because they always seem to feature some pop star who’s a left-wing, loudmouthed Trump hater on social media.
But basic economics, and the intense competition at that level in the media and entertainment industries, make the idea of bringing back school marching bands at halftime a non-starter.
In 1993, we saw the last traditional Super Bowl halftime show: “Winter Magic”. The performers appeared to be 100% Caucasian, and there were no big stars. It looked like it belonged in the 1960s, not the 1990s.
Scheduled to start at exactly the same time, on another network, was a big-hit, mostly-black (except for Jim Carrey), comedy-variety show called “In Living Color”.
Millions of Super Bowl viewers changed the channel to watch it. The Nielsen ratings proved it. And the NFL lost millions in ad revenue.
The TV ratings war was only becoming more and more brutal in 1992. The Super Bowl had already been the biggest event on TV for two decades, and nobody who had millions of dollars at stake wanted that to ever change.
“Never again,” said the NFL executives. There’s a huge segment of the typical NFL viewing audience that will definitely grab the remote if (a) their favorite team isn’t in the Super Bowl, (b) one team is ahead by 3+ touchdowns, (c) the halftime show doesn’t appeal to them and/or (d) there’s something on another channel that does appeal to them.
A post-mortem revealed that certain demographic groups (blacks and women) that are generally not conservative, dominated the halftime channel-changers. Also, because it was and is a ratings war, “Winter Magic” led critics to argue that NFL executives were prepared to win the last war, not the next one.
So now it’s been tattooed on the brain of every NFL executive that all future Super Bowl halftime shows must appeal to those demographic groups.
Successful business executives, like successful conservatives, are in fact non-ideological. We deal with the facts on the ground, as they stand, without allowing such ideological nonsense as DEI, climate change, and transgender rights to force us into bad decisions.
So the NFL executives decided that the halftime show had to appeal directly to the demographic groups that would change the channel from “Winter Magic” to “In Living Color.” Ideally, they’d pick the most popular performer on the planet among those demographic groups.
The 1993 halftime show was Michael Jackson. (By the way, “Thriller” is still the best-selling album of all time.) And the NFL’s problem was solved.
In this writer’s opinion, a 2026 halftime show featuring Carlos Santana, or the surviving members of The Eagles or Pink Floyd — if they’re still alive in 2026, and able to perform — would be Super Bowl Awesome.
But not marching bands, even though they can be pretty awesome too. It’s a business decision.
Jim Davis is an IT specialist and paralegal, with degrees in political science and statistical analysis: the underpinning of all science. His work has appeared in Newsmax and Daily Caller. You can find him as RealProfessor219 on Rumble.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.