NBC nixes anti-Keystone ad to appear during Obama Tonight Show appearance; cites policy

[wtmusic]

"NBC has rejected an ad opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, despite running ads in favor of its construction. The climate group NextGen Climate Action says it was notified at the last minute Tuesday night that a Washington, D.C. NBC station rejected its ad, submitted for President Obama’s appearance on the Tonight Show. A representative for the group suggested that the station may have bowed to oil corporate pressure in rejecting the ad and challenged the station to disavow that polluter interests played a role in the decision.

<>

'After a careful review, it was determined that this ad violates our guidelines. We have communicated that to the advertiser,' a WRC spokesperson said.

According to NBC’s advertising guidelines, anything that appears to be 'an attack of a personal nature, a direct attack on an individual business or a comment on a private dispute'can be considered unacceptable content."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/07/2426211/nbc-keystone-ad/

Too bad, but NBC's policy is clear. NextGen could have scored some points by skipping the personal attack.

[CincyDem]

1. Alternatively...they could have rejected it simply because...

...it's bad copy. Advertising 101, don't wait until the last 5 seconds of a 60 second hit to introduce your key message. It may be fun to depict this guy as a baffoon (and it may also be completely true) and I'm sure the creatives/editors enjoyed every minute of the production but if you haven't made your point in the first 8 seconds, it's just not going to happen.

NBC did these guys a favor by not letting them waste their money on the spot.

(BTW - the message in the last 5 seconds is really important for people to hear so it pisses me off even more that they'd waste 55 seconds of their money missing the point).

[denverbill]

2. Not a bad ad. I wish it had better explained the 'hows' though.

The entire purpose of Keystone is to get oil to the ports, so it can be refined and exported. That's not hard to understand, but the ad just skips that.

It also doesn't address the ridiculous claim by Keystone supporters that it will 'thousands' of jobs, when in fact, 99% of the jobs it creates will just be the construction, and it will cost truckers and other workers jobs.

Again, the ad mentions jobs and it mentions exporting the oil, but it just doesn't do a good job of making the connection of how those two things will be impacted.

Not that it matters, since NBC is refusing the ad anyway.