Archive for the ‘Super Bowl XLV’ Category

The North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Commitee on Tuesday unveiled its initial list of major events associated with the big game on February 6, 2011.

While the game itself is set for the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Dallas will host many of the ancillary events, including the interactive NFL Experience at the Dallas Convention Center.

Also in Dallas, the Hilton Anatole on Stemmons Freeway will serve as the NFL headquarters hotel and the downtown Sheraton Dallas hotel will be nerve center for members of the media from around the world.

Emphasizing the regional nature of Super Bowl activities, some 50 mayors from all across North Texas joined the Host Committee launch event at the Sheraton Arlington hotel.

“We’re going to do everything we can to satisfy personal agendas,” said Host Committee chairman and former Cowboys star Roger Staubach. “But the big agenda of doing the right thing to make this a tremendous economic benefit to this region and a great Super Bowl is our goal, and we’re off to a good start with this kind of support that we have.”

The team representing the NFC at Super Bowl XLV will have its headquarters at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving; the AFC champs will be staying at the new Omni Fort Worth hotel downtown.

Fan parties are scheduled for Dallas Fair Park (NFC) and downtown Fort Worth (AFC) for the day before the big game.

The Taste of the NFL will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the Fort Worth Convention Center. The event pairs famous chefs from around the country with representatives from each of the 32 NFL teams.

Among the first area Super Bowl XLV events will be a series of Kick-Off Concerts next year at Bass Hall in Fort Worth on March 6 and at the new Winspear Opera House in Dallas on May 22. A “grand finale” concert will take place at the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington on Sept. 10, 2010.

Super Bowl XLV is now just 634 days away — and counting.

After almost 30 years of debates and a $5 million warchest for the critics, the voters of Dallas have approved the hotel to be built by the convention center.

The critics were richly funded by the Crow family who own the Hilton Anatole near the World Trade Center. But the city moved ahead and bought the land and awaited the outcome of the voters.

Most hotels are in it for the money; however, Dallas is going into hotel ownership not so much for a large profit margin but to enhance the viability of the convention center, provide jobs, etc. The day to day management will be run by the Omni Hotel group.

Love it or hate it, the hotel is on the fast track for construction so that it’s ready in time for the 2011 Super Bowl that will be held at the new Texas Stadium.

In a sad state of affairs, the Dallas Cowboys got bitch slapped by the Philadelphia Eagles and any possible shred of hope at making it to the Super Bowl has been effectively quashed.

After a disappointing loss to the Eagles, Jessica Simpson’s unfortunate boyfriend, Tony Romo, collapsed in the shower after the game on Sunday.

The quarterback did not live up to expectations in the Cowboys’ game against the Eagles, with Romo receiving a triple sacking. We guess it was a little much, because he fell in the locker room!

Medical staff rushed to his aid, but he ended up walking out on his own, though he required some assistance leaving the podium at the following media conference.

No word yet on how Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones‘ surgically modified facial features held up during the ensuing melt down.

So what gives? And of course, many are already blaming Jessica for this latest fiasco.

The economic impact of Super Bowl XLV could approach $1 billion, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach said Friday.

Two-time Super Bowl winner Staubach talked about the tangible and intangible economic benefits of the Super Bowl, which will be played at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in 2011, at the 27th annual Stemmons Corridor Business Association luncheon.

The benefits, he said, include not only national attention on the area, but also the 125,000 people that are expected to attend the game, and the 300,000 people expected to be in the area because of the game.

“At the end of the day, the taxpayers will benefit from this,” Staubach said.

The $30 million budget for Super Bowl XLV is comprised of sponsorships and other fundraising. Staubach said 15 founding sponsors, or members of the committee’s “Million-dollar club” will each pay $1 million over the course of three years. Other sponsors will also contribute to the cause, he said.

The North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, chaired by Staubach, will team up with the NFL to have 61 events in the year leading up to the game, encouraging even more economic benefit.

The host committee will also team up with the NFL to raise $1 million, which the NFL will match, to construct and endorse a Youth Education Town, expected to be a permanent legacy of the Super Bowl.

Due to Hurricane Ike, as of Friday AM, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines has suspended all flights in-bound/out-bound for Houston, Corpus Christi and Harlingen.

Dallas area based American Airlines has suspended flights for Houston, Corpus Christi and McAllen.

Note: This fantastic article about the legacy of the Dallas TV show is copyrighted and was written by Jake Batsell of The Dallas Morning News.

He hangs his hat almost 5,000 miles from Southfork, but Colin Hunter has rounded up a huge herd of fans still infatuated with Dallas.

Never mind that the iconic television show has been off the air since 1991. Each day, some 23,000 people visit UltimateDallas.com, the fan site Mr. Hunter produces out of his north London home.

“There are people from everywhere — Romania, Japan, the U.S., Indonesia,” Mr. Hunter, 36, said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got this whole new fan base, some people as young as 12 and 13.”

Three decades after J.R., Sue Ellen and company began bickering on prime-time TV, Dallas remains an unstoppable force in popular culture.

The show that epitomized American grandeur and greed during the Reagan years is still syndicated in dozens of countries. Southfork Ranch in Parker draws more than 300,000 visitors a year. Diehards and new fans devour episodes on DVDs and cable soap channels.

“Dallas is not a phenomenon of 30 years ago, but actually is continuing to bring in new viewers,” said Janet Staiger, curator of Dallas: Power & Passion on Primetime TV, a new exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 14, chronicles how the show’s memorable characters, scandalous storylines and TV firsts — most notably the “Who shot J.R.?” cliffhanger — spawned a global juggernaut that continues to fascinate legions of fans.

Boosters of modern Dallas, meanwhile, often cringe at the show’s over-the-top stereotypes and the lingering perception that the city remains a mecca for big hair, 10-gallon hats and cutthroat capitalism.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” said Phillip Jones, president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The show’s persistent popularity makes it more challenging to promote Dallas as a progressive, ethnically diverse city with plentiful options for culture, dining and commerce, Mr. Jones said.

On the plus side, he said, “everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas.”

“The curse is, everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas from 30 years ago,” he said. “People think if they come to Dallas, they’re going to see J.R. Ewing walking down the street.”

First of its kind

When the show first aired on CBS in April 1978, Dallas chiefly was known as the site of the Kennedy assassination. The Dallas Cowboys, fresh off their second Super Bowl victory, weren’t even America’s Team yet.

Then came the TV series, which suddenly recast Dallas as a glitzy universe of shimmering skyscrapers, slick oil barons and gorgeous women clad in fur coats and showy jewelry.

“It was, of course, not a totally accurate image,” said Dr. Staiger, a professor of film and television studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “Not all women dress as beautifully as beautifully as Pamela Barnes and Sue Ellen did when they went to lunch. But it gave Dallas an image of richness.”

By the end of the second season in spring 1980, the show gave America its first prime-time cliffhanger when an unknown assailant gunned down J.R. Ewing in his office.

The scheming, sharp-tongued oilman — played by Fort Worth native Larry Hagman — had a long list of enemies. A prolonged actors strike forced fans to wait eight months before finding out the answer to the now-historic marketing slogan: “Who Shot J.R.?”

In November 1980, roughly 360 million viewers worldwide finally discovered who pulled the trigger. At the time, it was the most heavily watched event in television history.

The success of Dallas also elevated the soap-opera plot formula — serial narratives featuring multiple, intertwined story lines — into prime time.

“Now, you can hardly find a drama on prime-time that doesn’t have this format,” Dr. Staiger said.

The show inspired a crush of merchandise, some of which is on display at the Austin exhibit — puzzles, albums, even J.R. beer in pull-top cans.

Hollywood’s efforts to remake Dallas into a movie have sputtered. Janis Burklund, director of the Dallas Film Commission, said studio executives recently told her that the project is still alive but on hold as writers rework the script.

Actors still pleased

Susan Howard-Chrane accepts that her public persona will always be intertwined with her Dallas character, Donna Krebbs.

George W. Bush, then governor, appointed Ms. Howard-Chrane to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1995. During her confirmation hearing, the room went silent when Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, accidentally called her Donna.

“It wasn’t any big deal,” said Ms. Howard-Chrane, a Boerne resident who now serves on the Texas Commission on the Arts and is still constantly recognized by Dallas fans.

“I am never offended by someone calling me Donna — ever,” she said.

Ms. Howard-Chrane said viewers kept tuning in to Dallas because they related to the personal stories of each character — a rare occurrence in today’s prime-time lineup of reality shows and crime dramas.

“It was probably the last of its kind,” she said. “It primarily was a show to entertain, and to showcase actors and pretty clothes and attractive people and relationships. It was entertainment. I think we’ve kind of gotten away from that.”

The show’s success surprised actor Steve Kanaly, who played Ray Krebbs, Donna’s husband and the Ewings’ ranch foreman. Mr. Kanaly, who now grows avocados and citrus crops in Ojai, Calif., said he expected a quick exit after filming the first five episodes.

“I never believed the show had a chance to be successful,” he said. “I did five shows with everybody and thought, ‘Well, this is great; it’s been fun working with you, see you later.’.”

In retrospect, Mr. Kanaly said, the show may have caught on because it provided an escape from real-world issues like inflation, unemployment and the Iran hostage crisis.

“There were a lot of negative things going on,” he said. “And then this show pops up that doesn’t have anything to do with anything except a bunch of rich people in Texas and their crazy, mixed-up lives.”

Worldwide reach

Shady deals, boozy carousing and messy family politics may have been off-putting to some, but the program showed the world that America was a land of big dreams, Cadillacs and swimming pools.

Just ask Tomas Spilacek. During a visit to Southfork last month, Mr. Spilacek remembered watching Dallas in communist Czechoslovakia 20 years ago.

“Every person was watching this movie because Dallas is like all life in the U.S.,” he said. “Over there, communism. Over here, Dallas. Every Saturday night watching this movie is beautiful.”

Sally Peavy, the ranch’s tourism sales manager, hears stories like that all the time. Roughly two-thirds of the visitors who show up to tour Southfork are international.

“I would’ve thought that maybe it would have died down by now,” Ms. Peavy said. “But it’s amazing to me that people are still intrigued about the show, want to come see it, want to come experience it.”

Colin Mallon, a Southfork visitor hailing from Kent in the United Kingdom, said he got hooked on Dallas in the 1980s because “the storyline was brilliant, had a good laugh in it. It’s just something that made you watch every week.”

“Some of the things that happened in the show were just kind of bizarre,” added Angie Green of Wapakoneta, Ohio. “You couldn’t wait until the next week to see what was going to happen with J.R. and Cliff and all the characters.”

Still holds up

On UltimateDallas, the Web site Mr. Hunter started with two friends in 1997, fans interview the show’s stars, debate old plot twists and answer poll questions like: “Which forbidden love would you have liked to see?”

Mr. Hunter runs the site and attached fan forum with help from fellow fans in London, Canada and the United States. He said interest in the show has endured because its human storylines held such universal appeal.

Viewers could relate to Bobby and J.R.’s sibling rivalry, Sue Ellen’s alcoholism, Pam’s insecurity about her inability to have children and the family squabbles between the Ewing and Barnes clans.

“It was a character-driven show in a way we don’t tend to get now,” Mr. Hunter said. “It still kind of holds up, even nowadays.”

Today the Dallas city council moved forward with plans to build a convention center hotel claiming the city needs to remain competitive with other cities for conventions and tourist dollars by voting 11-2 in favor following Mayor Tom Leppert’s lead.

It’s a deal worth up to $520 million.

The city council’s decision clears the way for the city to buy an eight acre parking lot adjacent to the convention center for $42 million and own a 1,200 room hotel.

Dallas follows what other cities like Houston have done by building and owning a hotel and letting a management company run it.

The Dallas hotel would cost about $480 million to construct. The city would borrow the money and repay it with revenue from the hotel.

A long line of chambers of commerce, downtown supporters and hotels stood up to support the convention center hotel.

Only the Hilton Anatole, owned by Crow Holdings, opposed the hotel.

Construction should start late next year and be done for the Super Bowl in 2011.