Sitting down to watch the big game, some people are not even interested in football; the commercials are, to many, the best part of the whole event. To run an advertisement during the Super Bowl can cost $3 million for only 30 seconds. It’s expensive, but people are listening; within this short time, millions of people are watching what your product has to offer.
This year, a dating website for gay men called ManCrunch.com was willing to spend 2.5 million dollars for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. Instead of allowing this advertisement to run, CBS suddenly rejected this ad with a very vague reason as to why. According to CBS, the ad “is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday,” James Hibberd reported at The Live Feed.
CBS is just hiding behind this vague statement as a way to show their digust for different lifestyle choices. Another commercial that wants to run during the Super Bowl this year is an anti-abortion message starring Florida Alum Tim Tebow. Abortion is a major controversial issue, like gay rights, although unlike the ManCrunch.com commercial, Tebow’s commercial will run. This is a very hypocritical move by CBS. Its choice to allow the pro-life ad but not the gay dating service ad is unfair to a company willing to pay millions of dollars for a spot to advertise.
This commercial is in no way offensive–only two men kissing each other. Men and women are seen kissing and acting provocatively in commercials very often and these commercials are run during prime-time television. Commercials for erectile dysfunction, such as Levitra and Viagra, are constantly on television, and these ads are never considered too “inappropriate.”
Following CBS’s controversial decision, what are the guidelines that make a commercial “inappropriate?” It seems as though CBS is having fun dictating its moral views out into what it chooses to air and what it denies. Hopefully, someone with some sense will step in and tell these executives that showing an ad that doesn’t include Hardees burgers or Clydesdales would not be the end of the world.
