The "Desperate" Games Sports Play
Levitra is an official sponsor of the National Football League. Viagra goes to bat for Major League Baseball. Coors pours the beers for the NFL. Budweiser does the honors for the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and baseball.
Call it a Super Bowl-sized contradiction: Leagues that routinely distance themselves from perceived family-unfriendly behavior such as Sheridan's towel-dropping
Desperate Housewives performance on MNF routinely cozy up to sponsors of such perceived kid-unfriendly products as beer and erectile-dysfunction drugs."It's very possibly a double standard," said John S. Ashton, a columnist for the political site, The Moderate Independent (www.moderateindependent.com).
Ashton was pretty sure he spotted a double standard on TV last month.
Ashton and his five-year-old niece were watching the World Series on Fox (replete with behind-the-plate billboard ads for Viagra) when a Levitra commercial touting "long-lasting erections" appeared.
"It so crossed over the line," said Ashton, who subsequently filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
To pop-culture expert and professor Robert J. Thompson, big-time sports is not interested in crossing back even as it claims outrage over stunts like Nicollette Sheridan on MNF or
Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl."When the NFL says, 'Okay, there are kids in the audience watching and what we're going to do is, we are going to refuse ad revenue from beer companies, from erectile-dysfunction [drug manufacturers], and we're going to promise to cut down on shots of cheerleaders,' then I will believe the NFL is sincere about making its game safe for young children," said Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
For its part, the NFL portrays itself at the mercy of its broadcast partners. It said its officials didn't see ABC's "inappropriate" and "unsuitable"
MNF opening with Sheridan and Philadelphia Eagles star Terrell Owens until air time on Monday night. It said it didn't know Janet Jackson was going to bare her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show. (CBS, MTV, Justin Timberlake and even Jackson herself made the same claim.) It said it doesn't determine what ads are acceptable to run during games. And, while the pictures may be good for business, it doesn't run the TV cameras that seek out sideline shots of perky cheerleaders. (Some of its teams do offer expansive, and revealing, cheerleader pictorial sections on their official Websites.)But there's no denying the NFL is in business with companies such as Levitra and Coors. Of the Levitra connection, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the main focus of the partnership is an online site devoted to men's health issues. Still, most consumers know of the erectile-dysfunction drug for its TV spots, some featuring former NFL coach and player Mike Ditka.
To the NFL, it's a key distinction that the Levitra ads feature no NFL logos or current players.
"This is quite different from what you see with Viagra," McCarthy said, referring to ads for the rival erectile-dysfunction pill that have starred still active baseball slugger Rafael Palmiero.
To Thompson, there is no distinction, just hypocrisy--the league wants its family friendly reputation, and its ad revenue, too.
"You take beer advertising out of the football equation and that would be cataclysmic [to the game]," Thompson said. "The same would be with erectile-dysfunction [drug sponsors]."
But it's not just sports leagues that are questionably inconsistent when it comes to what's acceptable TV fare and what's worthy of handwringing. The nation's armchair quarterbacks seem equally torn.
This week, the FCC received more than 50,000 phone calls, emails and other messages from viewers about the Nicollette Sheridan MNF skit. In February, it logged more than 500,000 complaints regarding Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl.
On the other hand, the commission has heard nary a discouraging word from viewers about in-game shots of cheerleaders. And while it has logged complaints about erectile-dysfunction ads (it's not known exactly how many), the FCC doesn't seem to be dealing with a Jackson-esque deluge.
Ashton can't really explain the outrage over one type of arguably over-sexed content, and the lack of outrage over another kind.
"Maybe the double standard is on people's minds as well, where they accept anything coming from sponsors," said Ashton, still awaiting definitive FCC action on his Levitra-Fox complaint.
Meanwhile, the games, the ads and the cheerleaders go on.
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