Patterico's Pontifications

1/31/2020

Fox Says No To Airing Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:38 pm



[guest post by Dana]

The ad is undeniably profound in its eloquent testimony to life, as told by abortion survivors:

Details:

Lyric Gillett, founder of Faces of Choice, accused Fox, which is broadcasting the game, of stringing her along after she began negotiating in July to air a powerful black-and-white ad featuring adults and children of different genders and ethnicities with one thing in common: they survived abortions.

“In an era where we’re trying to give survivors a voice, whether that is through the #MeToo movement or on any number of issues, for some reason we deem survivors of abortion worthy of being ignored into oblivion,” Ms. Gillett said. “That, to me, is both ironic but also just appalling.”

[…]

A Fox spokesperson said in an email that the network sold out its ad space early on for this year’s championship game in Miami between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.

“Super Bowl LIV sold out at a record pace this year, and unfortunately we were unable to accommodate Faces of Choice and other advertisers,” the spokesperson said.

Gillet pushed back against it being a simple matter of ad space being sold out:

Ms. Gillett said there is more to the story. After providing storyboards and fielding questions about her organization, she said, she was told by the sales division that she would have a response from the legal department by a date in late November.

“Some individuals had apparently expressed that the sales division was not happy with the way the legal division was going in terms of not providing answers,” Ms. Gillett said. “So an executive flew up from New York and we were told Friday to expect an answer by Monday. Monday came along, we got no answer, and then found out that night that they were sold out.”

After that, she said, she asked Fox again to clear the ad in case other slots opened from cancellations for financial or content reasons. She said she was told in mid-December to expect an answer “very, very soon,” but the response never came.

“It feels like the reason for that is they don’t want to, I guess in their minds, give a story that we were rejected,” Ms. Gillett said. “I guess that’s the reason behind it. Nothing else makes sense. But again, that’s unprofessional, and I don’t think that’s how they operate with other clients.”

[…]

Her biggest frustration lies in what she described as Fox’s lack of responsiveness. She said she also reached out to the Academy Awards about running an ad, and an ABC executive got back to her the same day to tell her that the show has a policy against advocacy spots.

[…]

“Every time we would meet a stipulation or request, it would morph into something different. I would send an email saying, ‘What else do you need to get some type of answer?’ Even if it’s a ‘no,’ we don’t want a ‘no,’ but at least we can have an answer. We never got that answer,” Ms. Gillett said.

Note that there will be both advocacy and political ads aired during the Super Bowl, including an ad focusing on police shootings of black people, an Audi ad focusing on environmentalism, an ad featuring drag queens Kim Chi and Miz Cracker from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” about which LGBTQ marketing strategist Bob Witeck said:

“For queer audiences, it is an art form and an ‘outsiders’ language,” Witek said of drag. “Reaching the Super Bowl means taking our language into every home in the nation and millions around the world.”

There will also be ads airing from Michael Bloomberg about gun violence, and President Trump promoting the achievements of his first term in office.

Ad Age confirmed that Fox Super Bowl ad units were sold out in November:

After network honcho Seth Winter spent the better part of the last few weeks warning would-be clients that the last of the Big Game inventory was about to run out, the executive VP of sales for Fox Sports sold the last available spot on Friday.

Not a single commercial unit is being held back for the stragglers who may have been iffy on their creative or were simply hoping to hold out for a better price. The early bird has a belly full of worm meat. Better luck next year.

[…]

“Because we didn’t want anyone to get caught out, we over-communicated to the marketplace that this was going at a pace we’d never seen before,” he says. “We’d spent weeks imploring them: ‘We are serious! We are going to sell out!’”

[…]

Winter says the fact that the in-game ad units in the 2020 Super Bowl have been picked clean before Thanksgiving is largely a testament to the strength of the national economy.

As a reminder, Gillett began negotiating with Fox about airing her group’s ad in July.

Oh. Now we are learning that Fox Super Bowl ad units were sold out until they weren’t:

Fox declared in November that it had sold all the advertising time available in its looming February 2 broadcast of Super Bowl LIV. But just this week, it found a little more.

After holding nearly two months’ worth of discussions, Fox and the National Football League have devised a way to add commercial inventory to an event that in most years limits the amount of advertising that can be shown. While Fox and the NFL had long planned this year to trim one ad break from each quarter of the 2020 game, the pair discovered demand from some key sponsors was so robust that it was hard to ignore…Fox has decided to create what executives call a “floating” commercial break that will allow for two 60-second ads from sponsors…Since the network announced its sell out… sales team has been deluged with requests not only from advertisers still hoping to get in on the game, but from sponsors who were able to buy time but want to grab more so they can run longer commercials…

To be clear: not all advocacy is created equal. Surviving an abortion is the very real definition of #ShePersisted (and #HePersisted), but as Gillett observed, “we deem survivors of abortion worthy of being ignored into oblivion.” The trend continues.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

16 Responses to “Fox Says No To Airing Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad”

  1. Takeaway: Abortion survivors just don’t mix with chips, dip, and beer. Ew.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  2. well that’s how the free market works. If they don’t like it, let them get $50 billion and buy their own network.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  3. That was never in question, rcocean. My post isn’t about too bad, so sad, start your own network. I

    Dana (aaddb1)

  4. If they really sold out in November (and apparently you can’t just go in,flash a Platinum card and get 60 seconds automatically) , that shows how far ahead Bloomberg was planning, given his official announcement came on Nov 24.

    If the sales department was not simply trying to shift the blame, it’s the corporate headquarters that deserves the opprobrium.

    It’s certain that a percentage of the audience who will be watching have had abortions or been the male partner involved in an abortion. Possibly Fox was afraid of getting flashback from them. [To be clear, that’s not meant to be a defense or an excuse.]

    Kishnevi (c277d9)

  5. Consider the outcry when Focus on the Family paid to have the pro-life ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mom at the Super Bowl in 2010. CBS aired the ad. There was a massive uproar even before the ad played:

    A national coalition of women’s groups called on CBS on Monday to scrap its plan to broadcast an ad during the Super Bowl featuring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, which critics say is likely to convey an anti-abortion message.

    “An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jehmu Greene, president of the New York-based Women’s Media Center.

    […]

    Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, said she had respect for the private choices made by women such as Pam Tebow but condemned the planned ad as “extraordinarily offensive and demeaning.”

    “That’s not being respectful of other people’s lives,” O’Neill said. “It is offensive to hold one way out as being a superior way over everybody else’s.”

    I think Fox wanted to avoid anything that would be unpopular and controversial. Pro-life pov seems to do that to people.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  6. Dana,

    your post disagrees with your last remark about Fox wanting to avoid anything unpopular and controversial.

    They only want to avoid something unpopular and controversial if it is so amongst the leftists in hollywood and media. They don’t give a darn about the viewers of the Super Bowl as you can see with their commercial about black lies matter or their other leftist slanted commercials.

    NJRob (4d595c)

  7. Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, said she had respect for the private choices made by women such as Pam Tebow but condemned the planned ad as “extraordinarily offensive and demeaning.”

    The same people that gave us the “Shout Your Abortion” campaign (yes, I know that NOW and NARAL are theoretically two separate entitles) were upset because Mrs. Tebow wanted to share her choice with the rest of the country.

    Faces of Choice should take this momentum and negotiate with ABC, NBC, CBS, or whomever has next year’s Big Trademarked Game right now and force a public commitment from the network to sell Faces of Choice a slot, or else force the network to declare that no advocacy commercials will be allowed next year (that might be easier in a post-election year).

    JVW (54fd0b)

  8. Looks like fox is right to choose and gave ad post natal abortion!

    asset (ca7cdf)

  9. What is the best way to counter the heckler’s veto?

    felipe (023cc9)

  10. JVW (54fd0b) — 1/31/2020 @ 10:37 pm

    I like your comment. Your advice is a constructive course of action that invites dialogue.

    felipe (023cc9)

  11. Fox is only on Trump’s side. It is not on our side.

    nk (9651fb)

  12. your post disagrees with your last remark about Fox wanting to avoid anything unpopular and controversial.

    I don’t think it does.I think that both things can be simultneously true: Fox didn’t want to do any controversial advocacy (the others listed in the post are popular) after what happened in the leading up to and after the Tebow ad. I think that Fox probably stalled and delayed to avoid having to make up a flimsy and embarrassing excuse about why they wouldn’t air the ad because of the controversy it would cause.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  13. well that’s how the free market works. If they don’t like it, let them get $50 billion and buy their own network

    The free market also allows us to raise a holy stink about Fox, and not tune in. The only way to stop the heckler’s veto is to raise objections on the other side.

    That’s the thing about the free market. You get to make your choice, but then you have to live with the consequences.

    Bored Lawyer (56c962)

  14. Dana,

    I’m disputing your remarks that leftist advocacy is not controversial. It clearly is, but is accepted by those in the ruling class.

    NJRob (9c18ba)

  15. Was the subject of this post Fox’ concession to Roku?
    http://www.theverge.com/2020/2/1/21117919/roku-fox-apps-carriage-agreement-super-bowl-deal

    urbanleftbehind (284a50)

  16. I suspect that Fox has come to the same conclusion as I have about the kind of people who like to watch muscular young men in tight spandex grapple each other, and thinks it’s safer to just sell them Lite beer and Doritos.

    nk (9651fb)


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