The gay dating website Mancrunch.com is crying foul on CBS for rejecting a commercial that it had hoped would run during the Super Bowl on February 7.
In a letter to ManCrunch.com, CBS Standards and Practices said it had reviewed the proposed ad, which would cost an estimated $3 million to air, and “concluded that the creative is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.”
In the ad two sports fans are watching an NFL game and discover their mutual affection over a bowl of chips. They proceed to make out to the surprise of another sports fan watching nearby.
Watch the ad here:
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Earlier this week, CBS said it would only allow advocacy ads that were “responsibly produced.”
“We think it’s totally discriminatory that they’re accepting other ads that make social statements, but they’re not allowing ours,” ManCrunch spokeswoman Elissa Buchter told TVGuide.com.
CBS and its Super Bowl commercials made headlines earlier this week when women’s advocacy groups issued statements protesting the network’s decision to air a spot sponsored by Christian organization Focus on the Family, which features Florida Gators football star Tim Tebow, his mother, and what some are arguing is an overt pro-life message.
CBS has also rejected a GoDaddy.com commercial about a fictional “Lola,” a retired football player who explores his feminine side by going into the lingerie business. Watch that ad here:
According the the rejection letter Go Daddy received from CBS, the ad “had the potential to offend a significant number of people.”
Update, January 29, 2010:
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy and anti-defamation organization, today called on CBS to publicly explain its advertising standards following its decision to exclude an ad with gay content from the Super Bowl broadcast.
“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,” said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. “This network should come clean to the public about what’s going on because this seems to be a homophobic double standard.”