After ’04 Fiasco, Super Bowl Wants to Avoid Going Offsides

Forget what you may have heard. Fox officials swear that Sunday’s Super Bowl XXXIX won’t be watered down just to atone for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” last year.

“It’s going to be truly entertaining, and anyone who says it’s going to be boring doesn’t know what they are talking about,” said Fox Sports Chairman David Hill. At halftime, “Paul McCartney is going to do an enthralling show that is going to knock the world’s socks off.... It will not be watered down at all.”

But wait a minute -- it seems that Jackson’s breast-baring episode and the cavalcade of racy ads that surrounded are still making executives nervous. Fox, which is broadcasting the game, has already nixed several envelope-pushing ads, including one featuring octogenarian Mickey Rooney’s bare backside. And beer giant Anheuser-Busch, the largest advertiser at the Super Bowl for several years running, is cleaning up its commercials after an ad featuring flatulent horses drew a thumbs down from many viewers last year.

Sunday’s game is playing out as a scrimmage of conflicting cultural impulses, with football officials, network executives and advertisers trying to puzzle out what’s acceptable and what’s not for an event that 90 million Americans are expected to watch.

Trying to micromanage it all is the NFL, which has worked unusually hard to scrub any potential controversy from 2005’s extravaganza. This year, “we wanted to be involved in every aspect of the production,” said Charles Coplin, the NFL’s vice president of programming.

So will Sunday’s bowl be tawdry or tame? In an era of fuzzy lines and shifting standards, probably a little of both. A national debate over media indecency erupted last year, after singer Justin Timberlake ripped Jackson’s costume, revealing part of her breast. And though the Federal Communications Commission hit CBS with a $550,000 fine, the argument rages on.

Congress is vowing to raise fines against broadcasters who transmit indecent material, while the No. 1 new show this season is ABC’s risque “Desperate Housewives.” It’s not surprising that network executives complain that decency standards are maddeningly vague.

As interviews with advertisers and Super Bowl organizers indicate, the production of this year’s event has become an internal struggle to balance two competing goals: make the program sexy and spectacular enough to keep a huge audience riveted to their sofas, but sensitive and subdued enough to avoid offending a single person.

Impossible? Perhaps, but in entertainment as in politics, Americans seem to be striving to find the middle ground. And its athletic bona fides notwithstanding, the Super Bowl is about nothing if not entertainment.

As the most-watched TV event of the year -- not to mention the world’s biggest advertising showcase -- the Super Bowl has become the preeminent stage for American pop culture and the corporate ad spending that helps support it.

This year, advertisers will shell out a record $2.4 million for each 30-second spot, up 7% from last year, according to New York-based ad firm Carat USA. On Thursday, Fox said it had sold out its ad inventory of 29.5 minutes during the game, translating into $142 million in revenue, and that doesn’t count the commercials sold for the pregame shows.

“What last year was really all about was that it was the Super Bowl, that last bastion of an old-fashioned monster audience that networks used to deliver,” said Robert J. Thompson, television historian and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. The audience is old, young, male, female. “It’s one side of the culture war, it’s the other.... It’s red state, blue state. It’s everyone.”

The problem for organizers this year and beyond, he adds, is that it’s very difficult to produce something that will please everyone and offend no one.

“That’s why television in the ‘50s and ‘60s had married couples sleeping in separate twin beds.”

As a sign of the tortured dilemma the NFL and broadcasters face, Fox has sanitized the title of comedian Tom Arnold’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period” into a pregame special, “Best Darn Sports Show Period.”

“That’s just so goofy,” Thompson said of the title switch.

Without a doubt, the NFL is serious about banishing all offensive material. CBS, which aired the game last year, encouraged the league to turn over the halftime entertainment to its corporate sister, MTV (both networks are owned by Viacom). The league agreed and has regretted the choice ever since.

So chastened officials have drummed up an entertainment extravaganza filled with patriotism and nostalgia -- free, they hope, of even a whiff of sex or controversy. The national anthem, for instance, will be a star-spangled blowout, with a tribute to the veterans who ended World War II 60 years ago and the combined choirs of four major military service academies.

The 12-minute halftime show with McCartney, along with the elaborate pregame featuring multiple acts, has been scripted down to the last detail. Every song lyric and costume has been checked and rechecked for “appropriateness.”

At a news conference Thursday in Jacksonville, Fla., the host city, McCartney tried to make light of the heightened sensitivity. He joked that he wouldn’t bother with an onstage striptease “because I’ll be naked.”

The league has summarily booted any musical act that won’t play ball. The band Los Lonely Boys was reportedly chucked, for example, because its drummer was recently busted for marijuana possession.

The measures might seem extreme, but as executive producer Don Mischer, hired to oversee this year’s halftime and pregame shows, explained: Jackson last year “became the focus of the whole game, and that’s all that anybody remembers.”

“The NFL really was bitterly disappointed about what happened last year,” added Mischer, who himself became the focus of a minor flap when he was inadvertently heard swearing during the Democratic National Convention, which he also produced. “They said to themselves, ‘We cannot let this happen again.’ ”

Anheuser-Busch went out of its way to screen its ads with focus groups and even presented at least one to the NFL, which is not normally part of the advertising review process. The company said it took the additional step because was is an NFL sponsor.

“We are very aware that there is a conservative mood in the country right now, and we have to be cognizant and responsive to that,” said Bob Lachky, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of brand management.

But all this prim vigilance is creating an issue for Fox executives, who, after all, are trying to snag the largest possible audience.

The network takes umbrage at any suggestion that this year’s bowl will be a tamer, more toned-down affair. And they’re willing to live a little dangerously. Despite predictions that last year’s “wardrobe malfunction” would make five-second censor delays a standard procedure for live TV, Fox refused to have one, arguing that the game and its entertainment constitute a news event that should be covered like any other.

Executives also allowed a few eyebrow-raising advertisements to slip past, including spots for impotence remedies and one in which a woman happens to lose her shirt during indecency hearings.

The network is even tweaking the indecency issue in a post-game episode of its animated comedy “The Simpsons.”

The network is sensitive to criticism that the hiring of McCartney -- a 62-year-old rock institution, but hardly a beacon for American youth -- signals a “safe” show.

“It’s not like we have Up With People in this thing,” said Tony Vinciquerra, president and chief executive of Fox Networks Group, referring to the far-from-edgy musical tour group that was a Super Bowl staple in years past.

Of course, there is some danger built into the Super Bowl simply because it’s a live event. Fox kept the danger alive by refusing the censor’s delay, even for the halftime show.

There are no guarantees that performers will do as they’re asked, no matter how much vetting their acts receive in advance. Mischer recalled that at the 1993 Super Bowl halftime he produced, Michael Jackson was warned that children were watching and that he should avoid grabbing his crotch, as he often did in his stage act. Jackson agreed and delivered a rousing performance -- complete with his usual crotch-grabbing antics.

Advertisers and network officials agree that last year’s bowl ushered in a new era for the annual football rite.

“It was a perfect storm,” Anheuser-Busch’s Lachky said. “There were advertisers pushing the envelope. You had that flashpoint at halftime.... And then there was a lot of pent-up frustration on people’s part about what they were seeing on television in general.... We learned some pretty good lessons.”

Still missing, though, is an answer to the question: How do you entertain the masses and push the envelope when the boundaries are anything but clear?

“You try to stay within the lines,” said Fox’s Vinciquerra. The trick is to try to abide by common sense in negotiating a landscape that’s as vague as the legal rules of obscenity.

Asked to define indecency, he paraphrased the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography: “You know it when you see it.”

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The ‘wacky’ side of Mickey Rooney

Of the four-hour Super Bowl extravaganza, nearly 30 minutes will be taken up with advertising by Hollywood movie studios and companies trying to sell products such as beer, hot sauce and cars. Fox sold all of its available commercial spots for the game, at an average price of $2.4 million per 30-second spot. But not all of the ads made the final lineup. Here are summaries of some of the proposals.

Rejected

* Airborne, an herbal cold remedy, submitted an ad that showed the bare backside of actor Mickey Rooney for three seconds. Fox rejected it. “Ridiculous,” said Rider McDowell, Airborne’s co-owner. “We knew we needed a wacky ad to make a statement, and this one was odd, a little fun and sweet. There was nothing salacious about it.”

The ad can be seen on the company’s website: www.airbornehealth.com.

Pulled by advertiser

* Ford yanked its “Lust” ad this week after an outcry from an advocacy group representing victims of clergy sex abuse. The commercial showed a set of car keys placed in a collection plate at church. The clergyman finds a new Lincoln Mark LT truck in the parking lot and caresses the exterior.

Ford bought the spot to kick off its campaign for the new truck. The company will instead run a commercial for the Mustang.

* Anheuser-Busch pulled an ad that was a parody of last year’s Janet Jackson incident. In “Wardrobe Malfunction,” a wimpy young stagehand is shown trying to open his bottle of Bud Light. He grabs a nearby garment to use in opening the bottle, and it turns

out to be Jackson’s costume. He rips the bodice of the garment, then tries to tape it up. The tape doesn’t hold.

Anheuser-Busch previewed the ad for focus groups but was still unsure whether to air it. Executives then showed it to the NFL and Fox. Both said no. The ad can be viewed on the company’s website: www.budlight.com.

Approved

* The last time McIlhenny, the maker of Tabasco sauce, advertised during the Super Bowl was in 1998 with its “Exploding Mosquito” spot. The company is back this year with an ad scheduled to run in the second half. It’s titled “Tan Lines,” and Paul C.P. McIlhenny, president of the family-owned Louisiana-based company, wouldn’t divulge much about the spot other than to say it contains “a pretty girl, on the beach, wearing a bathing suit.”

“I don’t think it’s going to offend anyone,” McIlhenny said. “It’s fun, clever, titillating. But I don’t think it’s overly sexy. And I’m 60 years old.”

* Cialis, the erectile-dysfunction remedy marketed by Eli Lilly and Icos, is back for its second Super Bowl. Strains of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” introduce the ad, which features a relaxed and loving couple, says Leonard Blum, vice president for advertising for Icos. The ad carries the Food and Drug Administration’s mandated warning: Men who experience an erection that lasts more than four hours should seek immediate medical attention.

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Graphics reporting by Times staff writer Meg James

Los Angeles Times