For years CBS has grappled with the perception that the 75-year-old network favors viewers its own age. (One well-traveled mock slogan: "Now broadcasting in color!")

Apparently, the network is more comfortable with dirty old men than innocent kids. The ads scheduled to run during the Super Bowl this Sunday will feature an abundance of senior pitchmen for Viagra, Levitra and Cialis, the Big Three of erectile dysfunction. Unwelcome on the same airwaves is a commercial called "Child's Pay."

Moveon.org, the online activist group from Berkeley, tried to buy Super Bowl time for "Child's Pay," the winning ad from the site's recent "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest. Created by ad executive Charlie Fisher, a Denver native, the commercial shows small children doing menial labor in grimy industrial plants. Set to a melancholy acoustic soundtrack, it concludes with a question: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

As of Tuesday, the deficit forecast has actually risen to $2.4 trillion, but who's counting? CBS refused to air the ad, citing a policy against "advocacy" advertising, but the network will run an ad from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

It's a thorny, never-ending question. If this is a free country, don't potential advertisers have the right to have their voices heard, as long as they're paying?

On the other hand, don't business owners have the right to do business with whomever they choose? Technically, this isn't a censorship issue.

One thing is certain: Those ads that CBS did accept, including ones for Staples, Monster.com, AOL, Lay's potato chips and several automakers and movie studios, will play for about 100 million viewers in the United States alone.

Super Bowl commercials are at least as important to the ad industry as the game is to the sports world. One recent survey found that 14 percent of all viewers watch just for the ads, while TiVo claims that last year's Reebok spot, "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker," got higher ratings than any segment of the game itself.

Given the creative talent invested, many of TV's best commercials have premiered during the Super Bowl. In a moment of levity, CBS will present an hourlong special called "Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials," airing at 9 p.m. Saturday.

Visitors to AOL's home page and the CBS Web site have been voting on their favorite Super Bowl ad from a Hall of Fame that includes Coke's 1980 Mean Joe Greene spot, Apple's groundbreaking "1984" and the 1993 McDonald's ad in which Larry Bird and Michael Jordan played a preposterous game of Horse. ("Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothin' but net.")

Funnier now than it might have been a few weeks ago is the 1973 shaving cream ad featuring Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett, two '70s stars who have made a habit lately of appearing on TV under the influence. (Namath, of course, told an ESPN sideline reporter in December that he wanted to kiss her.)

Another veteran footballer, 64-year-old Mike Ditka, is reportedly appearing in a new ad for Levitra, one of the erectile dysfunction drugs. He should take some advice from Namath. Who, in turn, might learn a little something from CBS -- 75 and still going strong.

Source : http://sfgate.com