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Was CBS wrong to reject gay dating site’s Super Bowl ad?

January 31, 2010 by B. Daniel Blatt

As you may have heard by now CBS  has “rejected an ad submitted by a gay dating website to air during next Sunday’s Super Bowl.”

And all this hullabaloo has made me aware of mancrunch.com, a site with which I had heretofore been unfamiliar.  Moreover, since I’m not going to be watching the Superbowl, I likely wouldn’t have heard about them had CBS run the ad.  So, if the site owner’s purpose in proposing the ad were to draw attention to their site, they succeeded.

The ad shows two men making out.  And according to the Hollywood Reporter that was too much for CBS:

The network shot down the commercial Friday in a letter to the site — ManCrunch.com — saying the “creative is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.”

Also the network said its sales department had difficulty verifying the credit of the site to guarantee payment of the estimated $2.5 million cost to air the ad.

The ad seems a pretty low budget affair, so it doesn’t appear the site has a lot of money to promote itself.  CBS should have just left it at the creditworthiness of the company without raising the standards issue

Saying it did raise that issue, the network has given the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) grounds to fault the network. GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said, “This network should come clean to the public about what’s going on because this seems to be a homophobic double standard.”  Barrios is right to question the company.

Though, considering the questions about the company’s ability to guarantee payment of the cost to air the ad, it does seem to be “a publicity stunt.”  A lot of gay people now know about the site.

So, I’m wondering if the same folks who sued eHarmony for not offering a service to match up gay people will sue Mancrunch for not offering to match up straight people or lesbians for that matter.

HEADS-UP:  In the comments section of the Newsbusters piece on the hullabaloo, a very smart young man defends CBS on capitalist grounds.  You should be able to identify him by the quality of his arguments and the name of his family.

Filed Under: Gay America, Movies/Film & TV, Sports

Comments

  1. alli says

    January 31, 2010 at 6:26 am - January 31, 2010

    probably just me… but i can’t get over the nagging suspicion that if it’d been two women making out we’d have heard nothing about the “creative not meeting Broadcast Standards”.

    Fully within their rights to reject b/c of the money, no issues there for me. Just that last line is weird.

    (goes back to lurking… )

  2. chad says

    January 31, 2010 at 7:52 am - January 31, 2010

    I’m all for networks and media companies in general being able to choose what ads they’ll show, whether that’s based on the company’s values or the profit motive. Networks should understand that what they allow or don’t allow for advertising may reflect badly on them. I can understand how CBS is going to make a lot of people upset here whether they accept the ad or not. I do think though that mainstream traditional America should start accepting that something like an ad for gay/lesbian dating, when made with the innocent, banal tone of an eHarmony ad, is going to become part of American culture. In an open society, someone is always going to be advertising something that doesn’t reflect our values. This includes ads with a conservative message that liberals won’t like. I think it’s best that people just come to grips with the fact that one of the foundational rights we have in this country is the right to unwittingly offend others.

  3. Retcon says

    January 31, 2010 at 9:05 am - January 31, 2010

    also it was an incredibly poorly-made commercial… terrible production values, and the ending of it made it seem almost homophobic (just watch the clip where available.)

    If they had been asking to broadcast it on late night, with Cash 4 Gold or something, there would have been little problem, but it was a terrible commercial all around.

  4. Classical Liberal Dave says

    January 31, 2010 at 11:39 am - January 31, 2010

    Saying it did raise [the ad’s content], the network has given the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) grounds to fault the network.

    Ah, but GLAAD needs very little grounds to fault anyone, doesn’t it?

    If GLAAD were sensible it wouldn’t want an ad suggesting that the accidental meeting of hands in a bowl of potato chips is going to send feuding sports fans into sudden homosexual arousal to see the light of day.

    Barrios is right to question the company.

    Like hell. Did you read what the man said?

    CBS has a problem when they do something like this at the same time as they allow an anti-gay group like Focus on the Family to place ads during the Super Bowl.

    So Barrios is going to criticize CBS for allowing the Tebow ad just because Focus on the Family is responsible for it? (The hell with the message, we don’t like the messenger.) That’s the basis of his claims of a “homophobic double standard”? That’s nonsense pure and simple.

    What next? Criticize a network for carrying an ad from a Catholic charity because the Church is homophobic?

    No, Dan. The only reason Barrios has for criticizing CBS is the enjoyment of the sound of his own voice.

  5. Conservative Guy says

    January 31, 2010 at 12:11 pm - January 31, 2010

    Networks and publishers should be able to refuse advertising for just about any reason, including content that they deem inappropriate, or low production standards, in their sole discretion. I don’t have any problem with the CBS decision.

    Much of the criticism of CBS is coming from the same folks who are trying to force gay marriage, ENDA, and hate crimes legislation on the rest of America.

  6. B. Daniel Blatt says

    January 31, 2010 at 12:53 pm - January 31, 2010

    CLDave, yup, I read what Barrios said. I said he was right to question the company, but I didn’t praise the manner in which he did it.

    Good point though about him doing this to get media attention, though CBS did make it easier for him. And Conservative Guy, I agree that networks should be allowed to refuse advertising for any reason, but I also believe private organizations are free to criticize the networks if they don’t like those reasons.

  7. ThatGayConservative says

    January 31, 2010 at 4:27 pm - January 31, 2010

    also it was an incredibly poorly-made commercial… terrible production values,

    Why? Because they used average guys instead of twinky-stripper types?

    and the ending of it made it seem almost homophobic

    I think anybody would have the same reaction if they saw heretofore straight friends making out like that.

  8. ThatGayConservative says

    January 31, 2010 at 4:28 pm - January 31, 2010

    But then if you’re a professional victim just looking for an excuse to be offended, I could see how that looks “homophobic”.

  9. ThatGayConservative says

    January 31, 2010 at 5:45 pm - January 31, 2010

    Guess folks forgot about that Snickers ad during Super Bowl XLI that CBS ran. Then again, as I recall, the professional victims hated that ad.

  10. DoDoGuRu says

    January 31, 2010 at 7:34 pm - January 31, 2010

    #

    But then if you’re a professional victim just looking for an excuse to be offended, I could see how that looks “homophobic”.

    Comment by ThatGayConservative — January 31, 2010 @ 4:28 pm – January 31, 2010

    I don’t think I’m a professional victim, but I could see it as homophobic… The idea that two previously straight guys would start making out after their hands accidentally touching in the chip bowl seems to perpetuate some tropes that I had come to understand that The Gays(TM) officially found offensive.

  11. ThatGayConservative says

    January 31, 2010 at 8:32 pm - January 31, 2010

    Well, I guess I should just simplify my comment as “Who the hell really cares?”.

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