Eliana Willis

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    A Super Bowl Broadcaster With Slime and Swagger

    Nate Burleson spent 11 seasons playing in the N.F.L. He now balances several TV assignments, and will announce the Super Bowl with SpongeBob SquarePants.Nate Burleson, far removed from the 11 seasons he spent toiling in the National Football League, pulled up his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead during a well-deserved break.Burleson was in a buzzing laboratory with green slime-filled industrial containers, recording Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime” days after explaining the challenge of overcoming turnovers on “The NFL Today,” the CBS football show that was in Baltimore for the A.F.C. Championship Game. Hours before the Nickelodeon taping, he had provided updates about the widening conflict in the Middle East on “CBS Mornings,” the network’s flagship morning newscast.After a productive but unglamorous football career, Burleson, 42, has found high-profile success in the television industry. Now he faces a daunting schedule this week in Las Vegas, where the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will face off in the Super Bowl.Burleson is setting 1:30 a.m. alarms to anchor “CBS Mornings” from the Las Vegas Strip throughout the week. And on Sunday, he will announce Nickelodeon’s first alternate Super Bowl telecast for children, changing into a suit and racing down Allegiant Stadium’s elevator with help from security to join his “NFL Today” colleagues for halftime analysis.“I never played in a Super Bowl, so I feel like this is my Super Bowl,” Burleson said.Tony Dokoupil, left, Gayle King and Burleson on “CBS Mornings.” Burleson impressed producers with the energy he brought to segments while guest hosting.Mary Kouw/CBSNickelodeon’s alternate telecasts are an attempt to attract younger viewers by infusing N.F.L. games with augmented-reality animations on the field — yes, there will be plenty of virtual slime — and incorporating popular cartoon characters. Burleson will call the Super Bowl with the voice actors for SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star. (Jim Nantz and Tony Romo are announcing the traditional broadcast on CBS.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Hors Pistes’ Is an Arts Festival About Sports, for People Who Don’t Like Sports

    A series of events in preparation for the Paris Olympics explores a paradox, since arts and sports rarely mix in France.When it comes to the biggest sports show on earth, many Parisians have reached the stage of begrudging acceptance. The level of disruption — and metro price hikes — to get the city ready for this summer’s Olympic Games hasn’t exactly endeared the event to locals, especially those who favor culture over sports.“The Olympics are coming — whether we like it or not,” a curator from the Pompidou Center, Linus Gratte, said as he introduced a performance there this past weekend as part of the “Hors Pistes” festival. The audience chuckled.“Hors Pistes” (meaning “Off-Piste”), a festival the Pompidou Center says is devoted to “moving images,” came with an Olympic-ready theme this year: “The Rules of Sport.” It is part of the Cultural Olympiad, the program of arts events that is now a part of the Olympic experience in every host city.For the Paris Cultural Olympiad — spearheaded by Dominique Hervieu, an experienced performing arts curator — the city has opted to go big. Any cultural institution could apply for the “Olympiad” label, leading to a sprawling lineup of sports-related exhibitions and performances, which started back in 2022. This has led to a degree of confusion over what, exactly, the Olympiad stands for: Its official website currently lists no fewer than 984 upcoming events.And quite a few of them end up exploring a paradox, because art and sports rarely mix in France. As a rule, the country’s artistic output leans toward intellectualism rather than the virtuosity embodied by high-level athletes. The Pompidou Center, a flagship venue for contemporary art, telegraphs as much in its “Hors Pistes” publicity material, which says the festival’s goal is “to question and subvert the rules of sport, and to imagine new interpretations of them.”While the Pompidou is primarily an art museum, and “Hors Pistes” comes with a small exhibition, the festival features a significant number of performances, onstage in the center’s theater, or in its galleries. Some of these struggled to find coherent common ground with sports, however, like Anna Chirescu and Grégoire Schaller’s “Dirty Dancers,” an hourlong dance performance staged in the exhibition space, with sports-style bleachers for the audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    $7 Million for 30 Seconds? It’s Worth It at the Super Bowl.

    In a time of fragmentation, advertising during the game’s broadcast is still a reliable way to boost company revenue and familiarize viewers with a brand.A cat meowing for Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Peyton Manning chucking Bud Light beers to patrons in a bar and Kris Jenner stacking Oreo cookies. They all have one thing in common: Those companies paid seven figures to get their products in front of viewers during this year’s Super Bowl.For the second consecutive year, the average cost of a 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl was $7 million. Even as many businesses are being more disciplined with the money they have for marketing, and with spending on advertising slowing in recent years, the cost of a Super Bowl ad continues to go up.The reason is simple: There is no opportunity guaranteed to reach more people than the Super Bowl, and the slice of every other pie keeps shrinking.“It’s a throwback in terms of reaching everyone all at once,” said Charles Taylor, a professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business.In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the number of opportunities for companies to reach a mass audience through advertising on network television has dwindled. Popular shows have increasingly moved to streaming platforms, along with audiences. More and more, networks find themselves relying on live events, like award shows and sports, to draw viewers.“Live events are still huge for advertisers, and those are the ones that draw the highest attention,” said Frank McGuire, a vice president at Sharethrough, an advertising integration platform.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    I’ve Never Bought Anything From QVC. I Can’t Stop Watching It.

    The playful pleasures of David Venable keep pulling me back in.Last fall, I lived in a hotel in the small college town where I teach, an admittedly strange arrangement that came with a serendipitous perk: cable TV. At the end of most days, after stocking up on ice from the machine down the hall, I would get beneath the sheets and click on QVC. If I was lucky, I got to watch the incomparable David Venable, whose most distinct trait — aside from his striking height (6 feet 6 inches) and the dulcet tones of his North Carolina drawl — is his “happy dance”: a hands-over-head, 360-degree twirl that he executes when a product especially delights him. In seemingly every moment of his cooking and housewares show, “In the Kitchen With David,” he radiates joie de vivre.I don’t think I’m part of Venable’s target demographic. I can’t cook. I don’t like accumulating things. I appreciate when a living space feels homey, but I’m just as content in a spare room as I am in a curated one. Still, I’ve become one the many David Venable faithful. Regardless of what he’s selling, I’m watching. Venable avoids falling into the wolfish smarm that typifies the shopping-show genre. There’s a forthrightness of approach that tells us he’s interested in more than just selling things to us. When he’s talking up a portable power station, warning us that we won’t know we’ll need it until it’s too late, he’s not being a doomer; he’s being honest. He comes off like a mindful parent cautioning a naïve child, much like my folks, who, when I was in high school, always made sure I had an extra coat and blanket in the car during Minnesota’s brutal winters, just in case my car broke down. Like any salesperson, Venable uses scarcity as a tactic. But he doesn’t promise that any particular item will solve all your problems. Rather, he imagines a life for the viewer already brimming with warmth. Whatever he’s selling could make that full life a bit less unwieldy. You might feel compelled to buy those airtight, spillproof LocknLock storage containers, not just because they’re selling out fast, and this deal will only last tonight, but also because with Venable’s encouragement you can imagine walking to your parents’ home, holding your child’s hand, juggling a stack of gifts and laughing so hard you might drop your homemade hot-dish on your way to the front door. With LocknLock’s proprietary technology, however, you can be confident that your casserole won’t spill! For me, “In the Kitchen With David” functions as therapeutic entertainment. Venable’s screen presence never activates anything in the realm of stress or embarrassment. Just like us, we learn, he drops dishes at home, and his kitchen goes through various states of disarray. “There’s no shame in your game if you go to the store bakery and you buy something store-bought and put it in there,” Venable will say while holding a pie-carrier with handle-lid. His nonjudgmental energy transforms solo TV-watching into a communal experience, inviting us to marvel alongside him at the quotidian: a nonstick pan or a vegetable wedger or sugar-free caramels. And he is never desperate to make a sale. Look closely as a jittery brand ambassador fumbles over his or her pitch, and you’ll see Venable’s eyes soften and a smile spread across his face. He seems to enjoy it when things don’t go as planned. For him, spills and mispronunciations are not reasons to panic but opportunities for play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jimmy Fallon Reports ‘Today’s Taylor Swift News’

    “If you thought she was on your TV a lot last night, well, wait till next Sunday,” Fallon said after the pop star’s big night at the Grammys.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Today’s Taylor Swift News’Taylor Swift made Grammy history on Sunday night, winning Album of the Year for a fourth time.“Let’s get to today’s Taylor Swift news,” Jimmy Fallon said at the top of Monday’s monologue, before quipping that everyone else at the Grammys “got an Emmy nomination for acting surprised when she won.”“Yep, Taylor dominated the Grammys. If you thought she was on your TV a lot last night, well, wait till next Sunday.” — JIMMY FALLON, referring to the upcoming Super Bowl“Last night at the Grammys, the big winner was Taylor Swift, who became the first artist to win Album of the Year four times — all for the same album.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Not only did Taylor make Grammys history, she also announced that on April 19, she’s releasing a new album called ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’ Then every other artist releasing an album on April 19 was like, ‘Well, looking more like a June release now.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Rainy Day Edition)“We are getting hit by a biblical amount of rain here in Los Angeles. All around town, they’ve been gathering Kardashians two by two.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know, they closed our kids’ school today because of rain. And this is, I just want to mention, not an outdoor school. There is a roof on the school, but they said it’s too dangerous to come to school, somebody could get wet.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“When I was a kid in Brooklyn, for them to cancel school, there had to be, like, at least six inches of snow, there had to be black ice on the road, and, like, Son of Sam had to be on the loose.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Now, meteorologists say the drastic weather is being caused by something called an atmospheric river, which is also the name of my easy-listening dad band.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Here’s how you know we have a lot of rain: when the L.A. River is actually a river. Usually it’s just a big, empty skateboard park.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“These bizarre weather emergencies are just going to keep happening. We all know the cause. Al Gore warned us about this, and it’s getting worse every year, so I’ll just say it: The witch’s curse!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Kimmel had some thoughts after Donald Trump asked Truth Social users if they thought he looked like Elvis.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” star Molly Ringwald will talk to Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutThe “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David.HBOFaithful viewers can test their fandom in this pretty, pretty good “Curb Your Enthusiasm” quiz. More

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    Quiz: Do You Respect ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’?

    Photo credits: HBO (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”); NBC (“Seinfeld”); Craig Barritt/Getty Images (Elmo); Albert Ceolan /De Agostini Picture Library, via Getty Images (St Benedict amongst Angels, detail from The Glory in Heaven, 1746, by Johann Jakob Zeiller); Peter Dazeley/Getty Images (snakes); James Warwick/Getty Images (zebra); Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Moamer Kadhafi); Paramount (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”); Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock (Bernie Sanders); Universal Pictures (“Back to the Future”); Kenny Holston/The New York Times (Sanders); Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images (Sanders)Produced by Sean Catangui, Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli and Josephine Sedgwick More

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    Inger McCabe Elliott, Who Famously Became Con Man’s Victim, Dies at 90

    She was a successful designer. But she was probably best known for being duped in a scheme that inspired the play “Six Degrees of Separation.”Inger McCabe Elliott, a photographer and designer who, with her husband, was conned at her home in Manhattan by a slick-talking 19-year-old purporting to be Sidney Poitier’s son — an incident that helped inspire John Guare to write his celebrated play “Six Degrees of Separation” — died on Jan. 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.Her son, Alec McCabe, confirmed the death.It was a bizarre New York tale.In early October 1983, Mrs. Elliott and her husband, Osborn Elliott, a former top editor of Newsweek who at the time was the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, got a call from a young man who introduced himself as David Poitier.He said that he was a friend of Mrs. Elliott’s daughter Kari McCabe, and that muggers had stolen his money and a term paper he had written about the criminal justice system. He needed a place to stay, he said, until his father arrived in Manhattan the next day to direct scenes for the film version of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.” (Mr. Poitier had six daughters but no sons, and he had no involvement in “Dreamgirls.”)Charmed, the Elliotts invited the young man — his real name was David Hampton, they later learned — to spend the night at their East Side apartment and gave him $50 and some clothes. He asked Mrs. Elliott to wake him early the next morning so that he could go jogging.David Hampton, the man who had masqueraded as Sidney Poitier’s son, in 1990 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center after the opening of the John Guare play based on his impersonation. William E. Sauro/The New York TimesThe Elliotts were unable to reach Kari McCabe that night to confirm Mr. Hampton’s claim that they were friends. (She had no idea who he was, they later found out.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hinton Battle, Three-Time Tony Winner in Musicals, Dies at 67

    He won awards for his roles in “Sophisticated Ladies,” “The Tap Dance Kid” and “Miss Saigon” — the most ever in the category of best featured actor in a musical.Hinton Battle, a dazzling dancer who won the first of his three Tony Awards in 1981 for his performance in the Duke Ellington musical revue “Sophisticated Ladies” after learning how to tap dance in the weeks leading up to opening night, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 67.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Leah Bass-Baylis, a family spokeswoman, who danced with him on Broadway. She did not provide a cause.“Some people are born with the spirit of the dance,” said Debbie Allen, the dancer, choreographer and actress, who had known Mr. Battle since he was 16. “Hinton Battle was that kind of person.” She added: “He was just technically superior to anyone who came close to him. He had rhythm and style. You were looking at a supernova.”Mr. Battle auditioned for “Sophisticated Ladies” several years after he originated the role of the Scarecrow in “The Wiz,” the all-Black adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz,” when he was 18. Trained as a ballet dancer, he didn’t know how to tap and felt the pressure of being in a show with virtuoso tappers like Gregory Hines and Gregg Burge.Mr. Battle playing the Scarecrow with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy in the Broadway musical “The Wiz” around 1975. Hulton archive/Getty ImagesAt his audition, Mr. Battle said that he fudged a soft-shoe routine.“I panicked,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “It used to be you didn’t need to know how to tap. Tap was out for so long, and there wasn’t much of it to see.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More