NFL Wants a Clean Slate

Now that the exhibition games are over, the NFL is determined to avoid another exhibitionist game.

Angered and embarrassed by Janet Jackson’s breast-baring Super Bowl halftime show -- a fiasco expected to cost CBS-owned stations a record-setting $550,000 indecency fine -- the league has assumed control of Thursday’s opening kickoff concert, with performances at Gillette Stadium at Foxboro, Mass., and at Jacksonville, Fla., site of the next Super Bowl.

The concert is scheduled before the season-opening game between the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, a rematch of last season’s AFC championship game. The show will be aired live on the East Coast as a pregame event but will be shown on tape delay, after the game, on the West Coast.

“We want a show that resonates with our fans, that gets people very excited about the start of the NFL season, looks and sounds great, and is appropriate for viewers of all ages,” said Charles Coplin, the league’s vice president of programming and co-executive producer of the hourlong kickoff show, which features performances by Elton John, Toby Keith, Lenny Kravitz, Jessica Simpson, Destiny’s Child and others -- all acts carefully selected by the image-conscious NFL, which felt burned by the MTV production crew responsible for the Jackson show.

League spokesman Brian McCarthy called the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show a “collective failure” but added, “We had been provided assurances by MTV and CBS that they would put on a show that would meet the NFL’s standards and be acceptable to a mass audience. That clearly did not happen.”

An MTV spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.

McCarthy said the NFL never saw the contracts for the Super Bowl performers. This time, however, the league wrote the contracts, holding the artist, as well as his or her management team and record label, responsible for the content of the show. Dress rehearsals were performed in full costume, an unusual precaution, and, for the first time, the show will be broadcast using a 10-second delay.

“If for some reason there’s a faux pas, then [the NFL] will be scrutinized more than ever,” said Steve Rosner, founder of 16W Marketing in Rutherford, N.J. “But I feel very confident, from what I’ve been told, that the checks and balances are in place and nothing negative will happen.”

The Federal Communications Commission was flooded with more than 200,000 calls, faxes and e-mails after Jackson bared her right breast at the end of her halftime duet with Justin Timberlake.

The pair first referred to the incident as a “wardrobe malfunction” before making public apologies. The situation led to the highly unusual step of FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell’s personally launching an investigation.

The FCC, which is expected to announce CBS’ penalty this month, has issued about $4 million in indecency fines since 1990 and has intensified its scrutiny of broadcasters as lawmakers have pushed for stricter laws.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue testified in February before a congressional telecommunications panel hearing on broadcast indecency.

“I feel like we gave the keys to the car to someone else to drive, without assurances that they knew how to drive safely,” he told the panel. “The car crashed.”

The House has approved a bill to increase penalties for obscene, indecent and profane broadcasts. The measure is pending in the Senate. Rosner said the Jackson incident had a “snowballing effect” that extends well beyond what would take place during future halftime shows.

“It affected everything from the way the league does business to censoring the radio business,” he said. “It affected the way business is done in general in the entertainment business. Who thought Howard Stern would be affected by what happened on an NFL halftime show? It went all the way to Capitol Hill.”

And the NFL wants to make sure it goes no further -- at least where its shows are concerned. League officials see kickoff concerts as a way not only to promote the NFL and the Thursday night season opener, but to bring communities together. The first such concert took place in Times Square in 2002, five days before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Last year’s show was held on the Mall in Washington in front of an audience that included 15,000 members of the armed services.

This year, the league has started awarding the concert to the Super Bowl winner and the next Super Bowl site.

Coplin said things had gone smoothly with the preparations -- aside from complications in Florida because of Hurricane Frances -- and said he had no worries about the content of the concerts.

“What’s my No. 1 concern?” he said. “If it’s going to rain.”