Call it the "Blackout Bowl." Even if you weren't among the over 108 million people watching Sunday's Super Bowl, you know that at the start of the third quarter, with the Baltimore Ravens up 28 to 6, half of the New Orleans Superdome went black.
Entergy, the power company that supplies the Superdome with electricity, and SMG, the management company of the Superdome, say that monitoring equipment in the stadium's electrical system sensed an abnormality and cut off power to part of the Superdome. The game was delayed for 34 minutes and some critics say it will hurt New Orleans’ chances of getting another major sporting event.
New Orleans City Council President Stacy Head explains the latest into what happened on "Starting Point."
“It wasn’t Beyonce,” Head confirms. “We don't know what it was, and hopefully we'll find that out in a few days.”
Head says she hopes the blackout doesn’t overshadow the “magical weekend” New Orleans had hosting the Superbowl. She believes the power outage won’t hurt the changes of a future event at New Orleans.
“It was an amazing, an amazing weekend, and I don't know that anyone who experienced New Orleans' southern hospitality looks at anything other than that as a reason to come back to New Orleans, hopefully in 2018,” she adds.
Beyoncé brought the house down at the Super Bowl last night, wearing that cute little outfit. Everybody was watching her. The designer of that hot leather and lace peel apart outfit is Rubin Singer.
Singer talks with Soledad O'Brien on "Starting Point" this morning to talk about working with Queen Bea to get her look down just right.
"It was a career-changing moment," Singer says. "It was very, very exciting. I mean, leading up to it was a lot of craziness and hard work. So it was very, very rewarding to see it all come together was worth it."
"The process started a few months ago, and the fittings started to take place in the beginning of January with the actual costume and the development of it, with the kind of rehearsal that schedule she was on and the vigorousness of everything going on. She was losing weight every - every day really towards the end, so there was constant adjustments, plus developing this kind of a piece for a woman who is such a fierce performer and such an amazing, amazing show woman, I couldn't make anything that was constricting in any way. The range of motion needed to be maintained at all times, that was a challenging aspect," Singer adds.
When asked about how involved the NFL was in the outfit design, Singer laughs and says they were a lot of involvement.
"It was crazy. You know, because of what had transpired in the past with wardrobe malfunctions, the stringency of how they, you know, check everything, and they even said 'we're very hypocritical. We have all of these cheerleaders in scantily clad little outfits and here we are telling you, you can't do this, you can't do that.' So the costume initially was much more risque and much more exposed. And we came closer and closer, we decided to kind of bring it down because it is the Super Bowl and it is America. We didn't want to ruffle any feather so ultimately it ended up working in our benefit because I think she really looked amazing last night," Singer says.
Mark Freiburger and Ben Callner talk about the thrill of winning the Doritos Super Bowl ad contest.
ESPN's "Mike and Mike" hosts Mike Golic & Mike Greenberg on the big moments at this year's Super Bowl.
Actors Ernie Misko and Beverly Polcyn on not acting their age in the "Taco Bell" Super Bowl commercial.
It was the ad that caused a cringe around the world during the Super Bowl.
The ad for GoDaddy.com, called "Perfect Match," features supermodel Bar Rafaeli locking lips with a geeky looking engineer.
Jesse Heiman, actor in the controversial GoDaddy.com Super Bowl ad, reacts to the response to the commercial on "Starting Point" this morning.
Automaker Hyundai will have five ads running during Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday. One ad in particular called “Team,” showcases the 2013 Santa Fe and features a youngster who uses the car to recruit his ultimate dream of kids to beat the neighborhood bullies in a game of football.
This morning Hyundai vice president of marketing Steve Shannon and several members of "the team," including Jaeden Lieberher, Matthew Royer, Benjamin Royer, Dusan Brown, Ethan Munck, and Lance Butler join “Starting Point” to discuss the ad and what it was like shooting the commercial.
Shannon says Hyundai’s goal for this particular commercial featuring children was getting consumers to see the usefulness of the seven-passenger vehicle. He adds that the commercial “shows what the Santa Fe can do to help you assemble your team – in their case their team to take on the local troublemakers.”
Lieberher who plays the hero kid says the ad playing at the Super Bowl is “awesome but its going to be a little scary but I’m excited.” Fellow child actor, Brown says he has done a lot of commercials and this experience “wasn’t anything new” for him. He adds, “I knew that I had to come and do what I needed to do so I pretty much just went in there and did what they told me to do.”
Hyundai also made a special custom commercial featuring seven MVP's of "Starting Point." Check it out below.
If you're looking forward to to checking out the commercials during this year's Super Bowl, you don't have to wait until game day.
This morning, Starting Point gets an exclusive look at the ad by Mercedes Benz, filmed in New Orleans and starring Kate Upton and Usher.
In the ad, Mercedes unveils its new Mercedes CLA, a "highly stylized coupe" at a lower price that is aimed at younger car buyers.
"We felt like this was an opportunity to introduce Mercedes Benz to a much broader audience, to folks who probably wouldn't have ever considered a Mercedes Benz," company president and CEO Steve Cannon says on Starting Point this morning.
When asked about the cost of the Super Bowl spot, Cannon acknowledges that it was an "eight figure commitment," but insists that "when you play in the Super Bowl, you have to step up your game."
Sure the "Super Bowl" is all about letting the best football team of the year really shine, but for folks watching at home it's all about the commercials.
Volkswagon is responsible for some of the most memorable Super Bowl ads of the past two years, including 2011's "The Force" featuring little Darth Vader. Last year's "The Dog Strikes Back" followed up on the success, watching a pooch with big dreams of chasing a car.
This morning, Volkswagen reveals their 2013 Super Bowl ad exclusively on "Starting Point." VW America's Tim Mahoney talks with Soledad O'Brien about the inspiration for the ad.
The ad features a man interacting around an office setting with a Jamaican accent, who then gets into a Volkswagen with other colleagues to find their 'happy.' The song 'Come On, Get Happy' plays in the background.
"First and foremost, we want to do great VW advertising," Mahoney says. "And that particular ad we think is really important for these times because VW is a brand that really puts a smile on your face. I think that does that at the end."
"We did our homework to make sure we weren't offensive so we did some research to make sure we didn't go in a direction we didn't want to go," Mahoney says about the Jamaican accent used in the commercial. "The ad tested incredibly well."
"Wall Street Journal" sr. editorial director Chris John Farley, who was born in Jamaica, asks Mahoney if he had run the ad by Jamaicans and what their reaction is. "Although I love you featuring Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican accent did sort of strike me as Jar Jar Binks-ish," Farley says.
"We actually talked to about 100 jamaicans in the research and we had a speech coach on site to make sure it was authentic as possible," Mahoney says. "For me, it's a great mash up."
After the interview, "New York Times" columnist Charles Blow weighs in on the ad, saying he didn't like it and the Jamaican accent was "like blackface with voices."
We want to hear from you: What do you think of the Volkswagen Super Bowl ad?