On Jan. 15, the animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, announced that CBS had refused to accept a 30-second TV spot from the group for the network's Feb. 1 Super Bowl broadcast. CBS explained that its policy is not to accept "advocacy advertisements." PETA, which would have paid $2 million for the spot, complained that CBS, by airing antismoking ads, had already shown that it accepted advocacy commercials.
While the group's activism involves everything from fighting animal testing to promoting the spaying and neutering of pets, the ad they wanted to place during the Super Bowl was one for vegetarianism that focused on only one benefit. In the ad, two comely young women attempt to seduce a pizza deliveryman but find he can't "deliver the goods." At the end of the commercial, the women are satisfied by a different deliveryman who happens to be a vegetarian.
The ad plays up the theory that meat-eating men are more prone to impotence than non-meat-eaters are. The virility theme is clearly directed at the kind of men who watch football, and anyone who receives U.S.-originated e-mail spam will immediately recognize it as a national obsession.