This year’s Super Bowl should have no shortage of controversial ads, including spots featuring President Trump, Michael R. Bloomberg and drag queens, but there was one commercial that pro-lifers say was too hot for the network to handle.
Lyric Gillett, founder of Faces of Choice, accused Fox, which is broadcasting the game, of stringing her along after she began negotiating in July to air a powerful black-and-white ad featuring adults and children of different genders and ethnicities with one thing in common: They survived abortions.
A Fox spokesperson said in an email that the network sold out its ad space early on for this year’s championship game in Miami between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.
However, there’s more:
But Gillett countered that she had given the network storyboards and answered questions about her organization, only to have the sales division reply that the legal department would answer her by late November. She said, “Some individuals had apparently expressed that the sales division was not happy with the way the legal division was going in terms of not providing answers. So an executive flew up from New York and we were told Friday to expect an answer by Monday. Monday came along, we got no answer, and then found out that night that they were sold out.”
Gillett said that she asked the network to clear the ad just in case a spot opened up; she added that in mid-December she was informed an answer would come “very, very soon,” but none arrived. She stated, “It feels like the reason for that is they don’t want to, I guess in their minds, give a story that we were rejected. I guess that’s the reason behind it. Nothing else makes sense. But again, that’s unprofessional, and I don’t think that’s how they operate with other clients.”
See what all the fuss is about below.
