Super Bowl ad breaks are the pinnacle of advertising - but these commercials never made the show

Just because a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs $3.5 million this year, doesn't mean NBC will take a company's money. After all, despite all evidence to the contrary with Whitney, the network does have standards.

Over the years, plenty of commercials have been banned from the big broadcast for being offensive. Some, such as the spots PETA produces, are meant to be rejected so they can generate free publicity by going viral online. (Even major Super Bowl sponsors such as Anheuser-Busch have been known to step purposely over the taste line with an porny ad.

In 2010, the almighty Tim Tebowhimself wasn't immune from Super Bowl controversy. That year, the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family created a pro-life spot featuring Pam Tebow and her "miracle baby," whom doctors had urged her to abort due to complications from dysentery. Despite many protests from women's groups, CBS ultimately aired the Tebow commercial, which turned out to be quite sweet and even a little funny.

These other ads didn't make it to the Super Bowl (click on the links in the headlines to see the ads):

10. Ashley Madison starring Savanna Samson (2011)

Having had a fairly tame Super Bowl commercial rejected by NBC in 2009, Ashley Madison, the online dating site aimed at adulterers, raised its game last year with a provocative (and at times surreal) ad celebrating cheating. While the commercial didn't actually use the company's simple but effective slogan—"Life is short. Have an affair."— it did feature porn star Savanna Samson, which is just one of the reasons why Fox banned it from the Super Bowl. But what probably put the ad over the top were the cameos by a guy in a bunny suit—and a capybara. Because giant rodents are always sexy.

9. Airborne starring Mickey Rooney (2005)

Advertisers always like to flirt with nudity during Super Bowl commercials, but typically it involves famous actresses, athletes, or your basic Kardashian. But in 2005, the immunity supplement company Airborne had its ad rejected because it featured the 84-year-old bare ass of Mickey Rooney. The concept was simple: Rooney is sitting in a sauna (which for some reason has steam) when a woman coughs. Horrified, he runs out and drops his towel. Thankfully, Betty White and Abe Vigoda have higher standards.

8. JesusHatesObama.com (2011)

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Fox News doesn't exactly mind letting guests badmouth the president, but the network drew the line at having Jesus do it during last year's Super Bowl. In the offending commercial, which was produced by the conservative tchotchke-selling website JesusHatesObama.com, a disdainful Jesus bobblehead sneers at an Obama doll while "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" plays in the background. When little Obama falls head-first into a fishbowl, Jesus smiles his approval and flashes his unloving message. In other words, this ad didn't have a prayer.

7. PETA: Veggie Love (2009)

In 2009, NBC had many reasons for refusing to air PETA's "Veggie Love" commercial in which women wearing lingerie did bad, bad things to broccoli, asparagus, and—have they no decency?—a pumpkin. As the tagline explained, the animal rights organization just wanted to point out that "studies show vegetarians have better sex." (Sure, tell that to the poor pumpkin's mother.) Then last year, PETA went back to the cuke teasing with an ad that purported to show "auditions" for the original Veggie Love spot. Make no mistake: this commercial is NSFW —or people who like celery.

6. KGB: "In the Hole" (2010)

The idea that men have their heads up their asses isn't exactly groundbreaking (or arguable), but when KGB, the text message company that answers users' questions for a fee, produced a Super Bowl commercial actually depicting it, they went too far…up. As if the anatomically painful imagery weren't bad enough, it was probably the ad's punch line after a golfer drains a putt —"it's in the hole"— that sank this ad.

5. Bud Light: Skinnydipping (2007)

Even Anheuser-Busch, one of the largest Super Bowl sponsors, can't get all of its commercials on the air. In 2007, Bud Light produced a spot with a premise that seemed pleasantly clichéd at first—a wholesome couple decides to go skinny dipping in a pool on a beautiful, moonlit night—but then, like a naughty O. Henry story, the ad takes a pervy twist at the end. The message? Look before you leap.

4. ManCrunch (2010)

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In the same year that CBS agreed to run Tim Tebow's controversial commercial, the network refused an ad by ManCrunch, a gay dating site. The setup for the ManCrunch commercial is similar to the famous Letterman-Leno ad that aired the same year—a couple of guys are sitting on the couch watching the game—but then a bowl of chips helps ignite their true feelings. Cue the power ballad…

3. Bud Light: Clothing Drive (2010)

Three years after Bud Light tried to put its skinny dipping spot on the air, the company went for even more nudity with an ad that rewarded office mates with a free beer for each item they donated to a clothing drive. ("It's for a good cause," two guys in their tighty whities explain earnestly to a sexy co-worker who's still dressed.) By the end of the commercial there are black bars everywhere protecting viewers' innocent eyes—especially from the maintenance guy replacing a light bulb.

2. Rolling Rock: Ricochet (2007)

The Super Bowl may be the biggest game on the planet, but when the last whistle blows, baseball fans know that spring training is just around the corner. In 2007, Rolling Rock had some fun with America's national pastime with a wonderfully sophomoric ad showing fans (and a horse) getting hit in the crotch by a foul ball that wouldn't stop ricocheting. ("Stripey, no!"..."Not Phil!") But what made the ad strike out with Fox was the final visual that was paired with the tagline: "Remember your cup."

1. Smart Beep: Blind Date (1999)

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In an interview with Rolling Stone last year, George Clooney was asked what really makes him laugh. He didn't hesitate: fart jokes. "It's one of the funniest things in the history of mankind," the former Sexiest Man Alive told the magazine. "Even the idea of a fart makes me laugh. Saying the word 'fart' makes me laugh. I have iFart on my phone. I have remote whoopee cushions. Farts. To me, there's nothing funnier." So there's little doubt Clooney would love this 1999 commercial by Smart Beep that will make you feel better about the worst blind date you ever had in your life.

Serving police officer is among four arrested under Operation Elveden investigation into payments to police

Four men – including a serving police officer – have been arrested in connection with payments by journalists to police officers.

The Metropolitan police said on Saturday that it was carrying out searches at the offices of News International, parent company of the now-closed News of the World, in Wapping, east London.

A serving police officer, 29, was arrested at his place of work in central London on suspicion of corruption and misconduct in public office. The officer, of the Met's territorial policing unit, became the second police officer to be arrested under the Operation Elveden investigation into payments to police officers.

A 48-year-old man and a 56-year-old were arrested at their separate homes in Essex. Another man, 48, was held at his home in north London. All three were arrested on suspicion of corruption and aiding and abetting misconduct in public office.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that the arrests were made following information provided by News Corp's independent management and standards committee, which was set up in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal last year.

"The arrests were made between 06.00 and 08.00 by officers from Operation Elveden, the MPS [Metropolitan police service] investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police," the Met police said in a statement.

"Operation Elveden is being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and is being run in conjunction with Operation Weeting, the MPS inquiry into the phone hacking of voicemail boxes."

The statement added: "The home addresses of those arrested are currently being searched and officers are also carrying out a number of searches at the offices of News International in Wapping, East London. These searches are expected to conclude this afternoon.

"Today's operation is the result of information provided to police by News Corporation's management and standards committee.

"It relates to suspected payments to police officers and is not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately."

All four men were being questioned at police stations in Essex and London, the police said. Twelve people have so far been arrested under Operation Elveden.

Our resident TV addict Andrew Collins guides us through a week of action, costume dramas and the best of the rest of the last seven days in television. Featuring season two of Mad Dogs, a new series of the BBC franchise Hustle and the BBC period war drama Birdsong, based on the 1993 Sebastian Faulks novel

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Thankfully, Sachin Tendulkar‘s below-par performance on the Australian tour has dimmed the spotlight somewhat on the Indian media batting for a Bharat Ratna for the cricketer in quest for his 100th hundred.

In Lounge, the Saturday section of the business daily Mint, columnist Aakar Patel argues why, among other reasons, Sachin shouldn’t get the nation’s highest civilian honour:

“On 15 April 1999, just before the World Cup, Sachin Tendulkar’s car hit a Maruti 800 in Bandra. Tendulkar got [Shiv Sena chief] Bal Thackeray to telephone Mid Day, the paper I joined the following year.

“He warned them against carrying the story. This was surprising because nobody had been seriously hurt in the accident.

“Thackeray told the paper running the story would damage “national interest”.

“What was this national interest? Mohammad Azharuddin was about to be sacked, Thackeray explained, and Tendulkar was likely to become captain again. Such stories could spoil his chances. Except The Indian Express, no newspaper ran the story. In July, Azhar was sacked and Tendulkar was named captain.”

Since that story, Tendulkar and Thackeray, Bandra-ites both, have had a small run-in over the batsman’s statement that “he was an Indian first and Marathi too, but Mumbai belongs to all“.

Read the full column: Why Sachin shouldn’t get the Bharat Ratna

Also read: ‘Indian journalism is regularly second-rate’

Prime minister, maybe, but not a very good sub-editor

I had a story in my head this morning, something from my days working on movies, except like many of these stories, it’s a weird edge case, a thing that happened once and never again.

I think I was filling in for a union grip on a pre-rig for some sort of movie out in Long Island. No memory of what it was called or who was in it, and I don’t think we saw the D.P. at all that day. And it could not have possibly been a union job, or I wouldn’t have been there.

But there I was, and I think the rate for the day might have been a hundred bucks. It was the most money I had been paid to work in movies at that point, so this was a big deal.

There was a ride in a 15-passenger van, as most of those days started, and a mansion of some sort out in Long Island somewhere nondescript, as I find most places in Long Island to be. For all I know it could have been West Egg.

And the important part of the job for the day was mostly just blacking out a bunch of windows. I suppose they had to shoot night scenes indoors in the daytime the next day.

Totally normal stuff. Duvateen. Black paper tape. Rinse. Repeat. We had way too many guys for this work.

Except for this one skylight. Above a chandelier. It was going to be tricky.

And they didn’t have the right lift. They had what we called a Genie Lift in those days, which might be some sort of brand name thing, and it went straight up and straight down.

It most definitely did not have an articulating arm that could be moved around a chandelier. And it did not fit two guys. And this was going to be a little dangerous.

And there was no way any of us was going up in that lift and letting someone push it around from the bottom.

As I mentioned, it was not the right lift.

I believe I was sent out for lunch, as there were no useful production assistants with us, and I was the closest thing available, probably younger than my coworkers by a solid eight to ten years.

We ate sandwiches.

We milled about outside the mansion. Someone must have been smoking a cigarette. We imagined how we might rig it from the outside. With a crossbow. And the right sort of line.

It seemed plausible.

But we had zero crossbows available between us.

We would figure something out. There were plenty of us.

And then we were all out of the room with the skylight, and suddenly a crash, and the key rigging grip who really was going to bear the brunt of this skylight not getting blacked out by the end of the day was halfway under the lift, which was now on its side, and he was

bleeding.

We removed the lift from him, someone called 911, and I was sent to the end of the (long) Long Island driveway to flag down the ambulance.

He’d be fine.

We all went home. We all got paid.

No idea if they ever were able to black out that skylight.

'Fern Britton would have been a more credible option. As would Dot Cotton. Or a fern and some cotton'

Imagine you're a Radio 1 executive: try-hard haircut, Daily Mail-enraging expense account, the full clip. You need some "talent" to be the face of the station's New Music policy. Which of your roster of hip youngsters do you pick? Mistajam? Kutski? Kissy Sellout even? Nope, you plump for Fearne Cotton, presenter of Pet Swap and Love Island. Fern Britton would have been a more credible option. As would Dot Cotton. Or a fern and some cotton.

The resultant promo, screening incessantly on BBC3, sees Cotton strap herself in with a pink harness before "dropping" Antidote by Swedish House Mafia Vs Knife Party, which sounds uncannily like that club banger Angelos plays on Shooting Stars. Cotton even copies his woop-woop fist, like she's a gurning raver and not a showbiz brat who hosted The Disney Club aged 17 when she should've been out binge-drinking blue WKD. The camera pans back to reveal that Cotton's studio is located in the gut of a massive fluffy monster which rather resembles Mr Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street ("The Muppets are hot right now, yeah?"). It's got speakers stuck to its feet, like Chewbacca's stomped through Richer Sounds, and dances around inside an atrium until Cotton presses a red button. Sadly this doesn't operate an ejector seat but a sliding roof so the furball can cut some rug under the stars.

The pay-off proclaims: "New Music – it's our big thing." See what they did there? Bugger all really, except spunk our cash on a pointless ad selling Radio 1 to an audience who know about it already.

See the ad here

News Corporation is said to be in advanced discussions with Lex Fenwick to become chief executive of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and the Dow Jones Newswires.

In the 10th part of her series on how to build a blog, Andrea Wren looks at generating money with advertising

Right. On to business. How do I start turning my new blog Butterflyist.com into something that earns a profit? What I really want from my site is that it becomes my key income. As I said at the outset, I don't want to have to rely on freelancing any more.

Glen Allsopp, my blogging mentor from Viperchill, says there are plenty of ways of making money from your blog, and one of the most common is through advertising. That is, from getting companies who are related to your niche to buy some space, where they can place an advertising banner or a box.

Of course, it's important to have built up your web traffic in order to make your space appeal to advertisers. This is something I learned early on, having contacted a few potential advertisers – by looking at who was advertising on sites in my niche – before Butterflyist had properly got going.

At that point, no one was interested. For instance, one response was: "There is no link juice here unfortunately but please contact me when you are at more of an advanced stage."

However, now the site is receiving a lot more attention, I'm starting to think again about approaching suitable advertisers. Now I see how my site is developing, they can be from sources other than travel companies.

In terms of what to charge, it's worth speaking to bloggers in similar fields to you to find out their rates. The more visitors your site receives, the higher the price you can quote.

Glen says many bloggers earn revenue from sponsored links. This is where advertisers pay the blogger to publish a post in which there is a link to their website. Most bloggers will ensure the audience is aware that the post is sponsored, to keep everything transparent.

There's also affiliate marketing. Here, you place links (into posts or in advertising boxes) which refer readers to sites selling something. The blogger earns a commission on any sales.

You can find merchants (companies wanting to place affiliate links) on sites such as TradeDoubler, and some companies have their own systems set up, such as Amazon Associates.

It is worth pointing out that many people are turned off by affiliate links. Also, they should be based on a genuine endorsement from you. Otherwise, your integrity could come into question.

If your blog is based on what you do, you can use it to sell yourself too. For example, on Butterflyist I've set up a page which has some samples of my travel writing and invites travel editors to commission me.

This isn't strictly the same as "earning online" of course, but it's another way you can make your blog profitable. Will Kemp, a reader who has been following this column, has had some success in this way from his art school blog after only three months.

Will says: "I've managed to earn $1,000 (£640) from my blog, both directly from $400 of product sales and from $600 local events, speaking, and live classes."

Go to BloggingCaseStudy.com, a site Glen has created for more in-depth information on this topic area.

Next time, we'll be looking at product creation as a monetisation strategy.

This column appears fortnightly.

'I realise anything I say about the point of Twitter will eventually be proved idiotic'

On Sunday I come downstairs to find the middle one typing furiously on a laptop while a football match roars from the television. The middle one's friend is leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen. I lean in, too.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm providing live match commentary on Twitter," he says.

"But you're not on Twitter," I say.

"I know," he says. "I just joined for this." I watch as he types, "tottenham break with lennon but cross is poor."

"How many followers do you have?" I say.

"None," he says.

"That means no one can see your commentary," I say. "You're typing into thin air."

"Whatever," he says, typing.

"You're slightly missing the point of…" I stop there, realising anything I say about Twitter will eventually be proved idiotic. Instead I take out my phone, log in to Twitter and announce his odd enterprise. I read the tweet back to him.

"My son has set up a Twitter account so he can…"

"Don't say I'm your son!" he shouts. "I need credibility! Say I'm a work colleague!"

"Too late." Within minutes he has 12 followers. Unfortunately, most of them arrive just as he tweets the words, "Screw this I'm bored."

"You can't stop now," I say. "I recommended you!" Shortly after that, he loses half his new followers by announcing a goal when there is no goal. At half-time I tweet from the kitchen to tell him lunch is ready.

Sunday lunch is often taken in front of the telly, but because the middle one has a friend staying, we are going out of our way to seem convivial. We eat together in the kitchen, off plates, and attempt to converse intelligently about the point of Twitter.

"I don't really understand it," my wife says.

"My brother joined and then he tweeted that my mum was his best friend," the middle one's friend says.

"How lovely," my wife says.

"Um, I think he was being ironic," the middle one says.

"I'm sure he wasn't," my wife says, before turning to the youngest one. "I'm your best friend, aren't I?"

"Not really," he says.

"But you'll look after me in my old age. And stay with me always."

"I'm going to have a bachelor pad," he says.

"What about me?" I say. "Who's going to look after me?"

"You'll probably die first anyway," the youngest one says.

"Yes," I say, "but I'm planning to be ill for a long time before that."

"Then I would just get bored and pull the plug on you," he says. There follows a protracted and uncomfortable silence.

"You've ruined lunch," I say. "Get out."

"Fine," he says, beaming. He is already standing, ready for his exit.

"I'm going to be such a burden to you," I say.

"Bye," he says.

"Two minutes till the second half," the middle one says, opening the laptop by his side.

"Lunch's duration isn't dictated by the FA's timetable," I say.

"I can't believe how slowly you eat," my wife says.

"What are you talking about?" I say. "I've eaten exactly as much as you."

"No, you haven't. I'm nearly done."

"Right," I say. "I'm going to weigh our plates. Give me yours."

"Let go," she says, making a stabbing motion with her fork. The middle one and his friend take advantage of the distraction to leg it. My wife's phone rings and she goes off in search of it. Alone at the table, I pull out my own phone. There is a new tweet from the middle one. It says, "AND WERE BACK."

By Curtis Brainard In the last week, President Obama has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, focused his first campaign ad on clean energy, visited the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time, devoted seven minutes to energy in his State of the Union speech, and touted fossil fuels and renewables out west. It was an environmentally charged stretch for a president setting...

By Ryan Chittum The New York Times runs an op-ed headlined "Why Evangelicals Don't Like Mormons," which takes on an important issue but glosses over the critical role fundamentalism plays in the phenomenon. David S. Reynolds is writing about the political woes of Mitt Romney in evangelical-heavy primaries in Iowa and South Carolina and trying to explain how evangelicals think in that...

By Ryan Chittum The Browser has a great interview with Francis Fukayama on his five favorite financial-crisis books. Here he is on whether companies like Goldman Sachs were really capable of committing systematic fraud: It depends what you mean by systematic. Lloyd Blankfein doesn’t get up in the morning and say, “OK. How are we going to defraud people today?” but I...

By Mike Hoyt In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months...

Censorship fears are misplaced, tweets from the Middle East will still buzz around the world

When Twitter announced it was giving itself the ability to censor particular tweets or users in certain countries, the immediate reaction among users of the network in the Middle East – as elsewhere – was: #sh*t.

Without overplaying its importance, Twitter has proved to be an invaluable tool for activists, enabling them to find up-to-date, accurate information and news, to publicise and to communicate among themselves, particularly in times of crisis. The hashtag #egypt was the most widely used on the social network in 2011, and a Dubai School of Government survey estimates Egypt had the largest number of active Twitter users in any Arab spring country.

Such is the fear of governments from social networks, particularly Twitter, the service has repeatedly been blocked in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

But Twitter has proved to be among the most activist-friendly of social networks. From delaying a scheduled maintenance during the 2009 protests in Iran to quietly fighting a US court order to disclose private information on a number of its activist users, it is hard to accuse the microblogging platform of being a client of Middle Eastern governments. Fears that the $300m stake Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal took in Twitter would affect its freedom were rapidly cast aside by logic: the stake, at only 3% of the company – hardly qualifies anyone to make extensive policy changes.

Nevertheless, talk of using alternative sites spread on the network after the news broke on Friday. The site identi.ca was mentioned, as was open-source social network Diaspora, with users comparing their merits and disadvantages. The spirit of Jordan-based microblogging platform Watwet, which closed in June 2011, was also briefly touched on before being laid to rest: if censorship is the concern, a website under dictatorial jurisdiction may not be the best idea.

Workarounds that would neutralise the risk of censorship began to circulate rapidly, the simplest being to change, in the user's profile, the country of location to one where tweets would not be blocked. Many users, particularly in the Middle East, do not list their country of origin to protect their identities – a discrepancy noted by social media experts. It explains why estimates of user numbers in Arab spring countries vary wildly.

Others questioned how well Twitter's censorship could work. Social media expert and University of Maryland sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci cited the impossibility of dictatorial regimes fighting Twitter "tweet-by-tweet". The usefulness of Twitter, after all, lies largely in multiple sources and routes of information than individual tweets. Tufekci is supportive of the transparency Twitter's move introduces, by effectively informing users of what has been cancelled rather than the content disappearing with no trace.

It is doubtful that users, in the Middle East or beyond, will leave Twitter. The strength and breadth of its network makes it near impossible to replace or replicate on the short or medium term. Furthermore, it doesn't appear users would be willing to let go of their favourite platform: discussions about a one-day blackout of the network in protest appear lukewarm at best.

Most importantly, though, it doesn't appear it will be necessary, given the softness of Twitter's censorship and its easy circumvention.

As Twitter appears to be willing to fight for its users' freedom of speech, by pledging to report tweets censored or, as it has done before, to challenge court orders, users feel relatively comforted that the network won't sell them out. That trust, particularly for activists, is hard to replace.

Mohamed El Dahshan is an Egyptian activist and blogger

The film festival, which has its award ceremony on Saturday, has so far been flat creatively and commercially, especially when compared with last year's buying binge.