The Real Reason

In the interest of fairness, below you will find reprinted, an email I received from Mark Birmingham of MCV regarding the real reason they don't show commercials during the Superbowl and many other live sports broadcasts.

Bob Coldeen and Jim Barry also rang in to let me know what is going on. Some of you may not know and some of you may already understand the reason.

As both Bob and Mark point out, without the AFN feed, even though restricted, we would not have live sports coverage at all so they, I and probably you should be happy to have what we have.

Anyway, here it is from the horses's mouth:


Hafa Adai Bruce,
The reason you do not see SuperBowl ads, or any other national ads for that
matter, on AFN is because AFN does not show them. They substitute their
own Military commercials (you may have seen the start of some
inadvertently) and we are restricted from showing those commercials, so we
must cover it up with our own ads (preferable because we make money) or
"filler" ( just some filler stuff, logos, and stuff). The filler was a
static screen that said "Stay tuned for more Sports", but we wanted
something with a little bit more movement. Our Graphic Artist is always
looking for ideas, so if you have one let me know (Note: It cannot be
camera video due to certain issues, but we can do graphic motion, which we
do now.) The music is what is called "Music Bed" and is available for
free. I cannot tell you how much trouble we can get into if we start
putting Beyonce or Nickleback as the background. Unfortunately, Music Bed
is basically elevator music.
I wish we would sell more advertising and cover up the graphics with ads,
but you know how that is. Maybe when the economy improves a bit.
Mark