The public outcry denouncing the decision by General Electric's NBC (GE), which refused to run an ad by Freedom Watch thanking U.S troops for their sacrifice and service to the country, caused them to reverse direction and air the ad after all.
Concerning reversing their decision, NBC said in a statement Saturday:
"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."
Originally the fading network decided to not run the ad based on a policy which they say doesn't allow them to run ads of a controversial nature. Of course the ads, as I posted here, had nothing to do with anything controversial at all. The excuse used was a website URL (web address) had to be dropped if the ad was to air.
Of course the stupidity there is anyone can trace any ad back to something allegedly controversial if they want to. All you have to do is check out names of producers, sponsors etc., and find something in the closet. That was the dumb thing attempted here by Alan Wurtzel at NBC; interpreting the policy to fit with his personal preferences.
Everybody saw through the hypocrisy and were outraged. It's amazing that they even put themselves through something like this. They're struggling with credibility and quality with American TV viewers as it is. To blatantly make this type of decision was at minimum irresponsible and poor judgement, and at most a statement being made that they backed away from because of public response. Either way it was inexcusable. At least they listened to what Americans thought about it.
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