Well, the first half was pretty bad. The halftime show seemed pretty tame until then end, of course, and the second half actually provided some exciting football.

Regarding the Janet Jackson / Justin Timberlake stunt at the end of the halftime show … No doubt that it was premeditated. The real question is who knew about it beforehand. I’d guess that at least some of the MTV people who produced the show knew about it, because for Jackson and Timberlake to freelance something like that would have been pretty unlikely. I’m sure that some of the CBS standards people also were clued in on it. Second, Jackson’s wardrobe obviously was gimmicked for just such a stunt, so there was no “malfunction” as some have called it.

The NFL is obviously pretty upset, as they should be. CBS is feigning outrage, even though I’m sure there were executives who didn’t get the memo. The real problem is that the FCC is on this pretty quickly. There’s been a lot of recent debate about indecency on TV and radio, and Michael Powell at the FCC and others in Congress have been quick to talk tough about clamping down on foul language. Now, they might be put to the test.

The real problem here is that the FCC regulates broadcast licensees, which are individual television and radio stations. While some of the stations are owned by networks, many are not. So if the FCC is going to levy a fine for an incident like this, they will have to fine all the CBS affiliates that carried the broadcast. That might be fine for WCBS in New York or WBBM in Chicago which are owned and operated by Viacom which owns the CBS network (and MTV), but for the smaller affiliates that are independently owned in places where this kind of stunt doesn’t play well (read red states), this kind of fine will really make stations think twice about carrying certain CBS programming.

It will be very interesting to see the reaction of CBS, its affiliates, the NFL, and the FCC. Not the kind of PR the NFL wants the morning after the Super Bowl.