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NBC Screws Up Again!

Not deliberately racist, but incredibly stupid and ill-timed. Makes NBC look even more idiotic than many people thought they already were.

You'd think somebody at NBC would have noticed this before it aired and put something else in their place. There was no sponsor to get approval from, which would have been the case if it was a real (paid) commercial rather than an NBC promo. But whoever was responsible for scheduling this promo should be fired.
 
I wonder if the folks offended by the timing of the advertisement would have been offended if the network program preceding it was centered around a human gymnast who was not black? I also wonder if these same folks would be offended by King Koopa in the live-action Super Mario Brothers movie calling Mario a monkey based on the idea of humans evolving from primates (King Koopa had attempted to transform Mario into a monkey with a "de-evolution gun" during the movie).
 
RicoGregg said:
If not racist, certainly ill-timed and badly conceived:

http://www.news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/criticizes-nbc-badly-timed-olympics-commercial-172057606.html

If you're an Olympics-phile, just remember, you're stuck with NBC until at least 2020! :eek:
Click to expand...

This is one of those Radio-Info moments when you see who are the professionals and who are the lurkers:

This is when I use the term "nontroversy." Notwithstanding that most people seem not to have "seen" the possible racist implications of the promo, the fact is that commercials and promos on most network and local television stations are programmed in beforehand. When a program or news broadcast go into a "hard break" (the program content is automatically cut into with a commercial), the master control people don't have any real control what has been preprogrammed on the video server.

There are those people who would love to conjure up images of a white hooded Klansman in his dress whites sitting somewhere in the dark caverns of NBC at their network technical hub at Secaucus, NJ just waiting the first opportunity to punch on the promo with the monkey hanging on a trapeze.

But as the old Gershwin song goes, "It Ain't Necessarily So."
 
If the gymnast was Caucasian or Asian, would the racist card have been played? What's racist about a chimpanzee? According to the theory of evolution, we ALL came from apes, not just the black race. It seems like anytime a black person is involved somebody somewhere finds something "racist" about something that has nothing to do anything. And if I have to call someone whose great-great-great-great-great-grand parents came here from Africa an "African-American", then they have to call me "Scottish-American".
 
PirateJohnny said:
... then they have to call me "Scottish-American".
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Aye, and so it 'tis MacGonagle.

Here, let's hoist one ta' th' King. I'll help ya! ;D
 
Like I've said before, thank god that CBC is regaining the Olympics in 2014/16!

-crainbebo
 
sdwulfdawg said:
This is when I use the term "nontroversy." Notwithstanding that most people seem not to have "seen" the possible racist implications of the promo, the fact is that commercials and promos on most network and local television stations are programmed in beforehand. When a program or news broadcast go into a "hard break" (the program content is automatically cut into with a commercial), the master control people don't have any real control what has been preprogrammed on the video server.
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This.
 
Wow, I didn't think the populace could be any more hypersensitive and then.....this.

Seriously, this is worth a thread topic?
 
PirateJohnny said:
What's racist about a chimpanzee?
Click to expand...

Any reference to some kind of primate when referring to a Black person is usually considered a racial slur. I won't repeat the terms, but they're easy enough to find.

One of the most (in)famous was uttered by Howard Cosell in 1983, calling the Washington Redskins' Alvin Garrett a "little monkey" during a Monday Night Football game. He insisted he didn't mean it that way - Hah-wad was a lot of things that most of us find unpleasant, but racist was not one of them - but the damage was done. 1983 was his last season on MNF, and that comment may have been one of the reasons.
 
Troy Goodwin said:
Hey guys, check out the YouTube video & be the judge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs9FR4cr6qE&feature=plcp

Animal Practice maybe the worst show on NBC to go down like SuperTrain back in 1979. We're stuck with The Peacock, and their worst-ever Olympic coverage through the year 2020.
Click to expand...
I think 'The New Normal' looks pretty lame, too...ripoff of the 'Modern Family' gay couple, with the standard 'rising inflection accents'(bet someone lisps, too)plus a 'female Archie Bunker' mom(in-law?), and a precocious kid...and a baby..and some other chick. THU-perrrrr!
 
sdwulfdawg said:
RicoGregg said:
If not racist, certainly ill-timed and badly conceived:

http://www.news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/criticizes-nbc-badly-timed-olympics-commercial-172057606.html
Click to expand...

This is one of those Radio-Info moments when you see who are the professionals and who are the lurkers:
This is when I use the term "nontroversy." Notwithstanding that most people seem not to have "seen" the possible racist implications of the promo, the fact is that commercials and promos on most network and local television stations are programmed in beforehand. When a program or news broadcast go into a "hard break" (the program content is automatically cut into with a commercial), the master control people don't have any real control what has been preprogrammed on the video server.
Click to expand...

I'm not a professional, but I used to be married to a former radio station traffic manager (and my brother is a non-pro TV geek)
I'm still not clean on the national vs local spots and all the details, but I have seen a few lovely train-wrecks in traffic management in my life - most of which I forget. (Do networks still (or ever) have people like Harry on Mad Men who actually read the scripts?)
There was one movie of the week (with Linda Hamilton?) about a little boy with AIDS and just after the boy died, there was a Campbell's Soup ad with this dirge sounding music which I would have described as a funeral march. The voice-over? "Do you feel dead at the end of the day?"

Every now and then, my brother or I see a commercial and he will asset that someone is going to get fired. I can't imagine that in most cases, but some of them are just really badly placed.
This was not one of those (and I didn't even see it).
Footnote: The ex-husband lost his TM job when he expedited it from an 80 hour a week job to a few hours a day. Oops.
 
"Nontroversy" is right. I see poorly placed commercials all the time. I imagine it's impossible for the network staff who schedule commercials to not make this kind of a mistake on occasion. Are these people required to watch every minute of every scripted and non-scripted program to make sure that the content of the show doesn't clash with the many commercials played during the shows? I doubt it.
 
The John Boy and Billy Show played "Another one bites the Dust" after reporting on sniper attack. Since the music is picked in advance, nobody noticed it.
I think you've got a lot of people who have too much time on their hands and get their britches in a wad over much ado about nothing. I saw the monkey ad after the olympics and didn't even get the connection. I doubt hardly anyone else noticed it either except for a few crabs and busy bodies.
 
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