MOVEON'S OFFSIDE KICK

Political Group Can't Buy Super Bowl Airtime for an Anti-Bush Ad

Following what it calls a long-standing policy of refusing Super Bowl
airtime to all ads that take a stand on issues of public importance,
CBS has refused airtime during next Sunday's game to two advocacy
groups, MoveOn org and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA). PETA and MoveOn, however, have openly wondered whether CBS's
policy has been selectively applied. MoveOn's ad, the winner of its
"Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, depicts children working menial jobs
behind the caption: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1
trillion deficit?" PETA's equates meat eating with impotence. Neither
ad, contend CBS's critics, is more controversial than the campaign
launched during Super Bowl 2002 by the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) equating illegal-drug buys with terrorism.

MoveOn and PETA may have a case, but only to the extent that all
advertising is advocacy -- drink Miller, not Bud; eat McDonald's, not
Burger King; ask your doctor if Lipitor is right for you. But it was
Fox, not CBS, that aired the ONDCP ads in 2002, and while CBS may plan
to, it hasn't done so yet.

"If you see an ad that offends you on this year's Super Bowl, call me
the morning after the broadcast," says the CBS network's executive
vice president, Martin D. Franks. "But if you want to talk about last
year's ads, call ABC. And if you want to talk about the ads two years
ago, call Fox." Franks, who says he's "losing his sense of humor" over
what he calls an "invalid controversy," speculates that both
organizations have intentionally manufactured trouble "because they're
enjoying all the media attention they're getting."

He might be right. If it's hard to imagine that CBS -- the network that
kicked The Reagans down to Showtime and whose parent company, Viacom,
refused anti-war billboards -- would risk offending its estimated 90
million Super Bowl viewers by accepting either ad, it's even harder to
imagine that MoveOn or PETA thought they would.

It's a familiar advertising trick, says Bill Hillsman, president of North Woods
Advertising, Minneapolis, Minnesota: If you stir up enough interest in your ad,
you can win some free airtime. "PETA has long known the value of what we called
'earned media,'" says Hillsman, who pioneered the technique back in 1990
with an
offbeat, two-minute ad for then-senatorial candidate Paul Wellstone, which
aired
many times for free after local and national networks found it newsworthy.

Neither MoveOn nor PETA returned calls to confirm its tactics, but
they no doubt hope their campaigns will prove more successful than the
ONDCP's: According to a study released this week by the National
Institute of Drug Abuse, the two exquisitely compelling anti-drug
spots, by British director Tony Kaye (American History X), which cost
taxpayers $3.2 million, have had next to zero effect on teenagers'
attitudes toward drug use.