Halftime hysteria isn't going to help

Few people are more cynical about the television business than me, but I find it impossible to believe that anybody at CBS knew in advance that Justin Timberlake would bare Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl halftime show.

And I'm already tired of the political grandstanding that has come in the aftermath, particularly by an FCC chairman who has, for the most part, turned a blind eye toward television content, instead concentrating on helping the big media conglomerates grow bigger.

Oh, I was firmly convinced that Jackson and Timberlake planned the stunt before Jackson admitted that was the case. (Although both deny that they intended to expose her breast. They claim that just a red-lace top was to be revealed.) But let's look at this cynically — CBS had no reason to go along with it.

Networks are all about ratings and making money. CBS already had a huge audience for the Super Bowl and had already sold all the ads at outrageous rates. It stood to gain nothing from the breast-baring.

Jackson, who is about to release an album, got the kind of publicity you can't buy.

If either Jackson or Timberlake recorded for the company owned by CBS's parent, Viacom, there might be some indirect financial benefit to the network. But they do not.

In essence, what CBS got out of this was a whole lot of criticism. And, if FCC Chairman Michael Powell has his way, some fines. But if David Kay, the man in charge of searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, can claim that President Bush was the victim of bad intelligence before the war, CBS can certainly claim it was the victim of the actions of two sleazy performers.

Jackson has issued a statement that she and Timberlake planned the stunt without informing anyone at either CBS or MTV (another Viacom company that produced the halftime show).

Don't tell me that MTV knew because it was promising something "shocking." MTV always makes statements like that, and, in fact, made similar promises when it produced the Super Bowl halftime the last time it was on CBS.

Do I hold CBS and MTV blameless? Absolutely not. They admit network representatives had been at all the rehearsals and knew this would be a tawdry halftime performance by Jackson, Timberlake, Kid Rock and Nelly.

But would there have been a public outcry over what would have been just another tasteless show — the latest on a long list — if it hadn't gone one step (perhaps half a step) further with the bare breast? No.