Stan:

Your viewpoint is utterly reasonable. The point here from my perspective is less whether there’s a formal legal challenge possible here (you note the state-actor point, though you might consider some of the broadcast regulations that could attach; I’m not certain it’s quite open and shut) but rather that the dispute raises some hard questions about the attention economy and who controls what in terms of what we see, hear, read and experience. (I’m thinking in part about what Ethan Zuckerman has been doing on the Global Attention Profiles athttp://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerm… for instance). Thanks for commenting.

-JP

I’m afraid I don’t see this as a free speech issue
in any legal sense. CBS is a non-governmental entity that can refuse to show any sorts
of advertisements it feels are inappropriate.

Moving beyond the legal principal:
The SuperBowl is one of the few things that unites
all sorts of Americans. Keeping divisive political
advertisements out of the experience seems like
a wise decision to me. We’ve got too much polarization
in this society as it is.

Stan

No. I surely agree: there is no serious societal disagreement that kids should not smoke. They shouldn’t.

I’m just looking for a standard that I can understand. Taking Mr. Carnell’s line a bit furher, perhaps the standard is: “We will not run issue ads on topics that are controversial.”

BTW, you might do better to consult CBS ’s statement on what ads it does and does not run rather than taht lame NYT story Dave linked to.

Give me a break. It’s an entertainment program that makes a ton of money, and networks traditionally don’t run ads during the SuperBowl that are issue ads taking one side or another on a controversial social topic.

You’re not seriously suggesting, are you, that there is a serious societal disagreement and controversy over whether or not kids should smoke?

Networks have turned down PETA superbowl ads for years. CNN famously refused to run anti-global warming ads.