Fox TV Hit Series ‘Glee’ To Get Super Bowl Lead Out Spot

Added on Dec 28, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

It’s no secret that the Super Bowl is much more than a football game–it’s big business for a number of industries. Since the Super Bowl is usually the highest rated TV broadcast in the United States every year, the network covering the game likes to get as much mileage out of their investment as possible. The desire to leverage the huge audience to the greatest extent possible gave birth to the ‘lead out program’. This is the show that airs immediately after the Super Bowl and the networks have tried to make this a ‘big event’ befitting the ‘lead in’.

Fox TV has recently announced that the 2011 Super Bowl lead out program will be a special episode of their hit series ‘Glee’. I’m a grown ass man, so I don’t watch ‘Glee’ but it has attracted a huge and devoted audience:

Now in its sophomore season, GLEE is a biting musical comedy that has quickly become a pop-culture phenomenon. The highest-rated new scripted series of the season boasts critical acclaim, a loyal fan base of “GLEEks,” two certified Gold albums, more than 10 million song downloads and an incredible 19 Emmy nominations – earning it the distinction of being the most-nominated series of the year. To top it off, the genre-defying, award-winning series has been picked up through its third season.

While the network is keeping many of the details about the special post Super Bowl ‘Glee’ episode under wraps here’s what is known about it:

Jane Lynch confirmed a few details about GLEE’s upcoming February 6, Super Bowl episode to the AP, noting that the episode will feature the return of Gwyneth Paltrow, a guest appearance by Katie Couric and a performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.

Lynch also notes that she will “throw a hissy fit, the likes of which no one has ever seen before…. I try to destroy the locker room and principal’s office. I try to shoot one of my cheerleaders from a cannon.”

Paltrow made her GLEE premiere on November 16, in an episode entitled, ‘The Substitute’. Gwyneth starred as a substitute teacher for Will Schuester’s Spanish class and glee club when he gots sick.

As part of her appearance, Paltrow sang a rendition of Cee-Lo’s F*** You. The lyrics were changed to the more primetime friendly, Forget You. She additionally performed a rendition of the Umbrella/Singin’ In The Rain mashup.

Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Since then, Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley, Shallow Hal, and Proof, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. In 2008, she appeared in the highest grossing movie of her career, the superhero film Iron Man, and then reprised her role as Pepper Potts in its sequel, Iron Man 2.

For much of the late 1980′s and 1990′s, the networks tried to use the Super Bowl lead out spot to launch new TV series. That strategy proved largely ineffective, however, and in the past decade the trend has been to give the coveted timespot to an existing program.