Dear all

Today as I was quietly drinking my morning cup of coffee I happened to
come upon an editorial in the IHT titled 'Another Powell Departs'
(Thursday January 27 2005)
One sentence in particular caught my attention "The broadcasts that
were targeted have too often been innocuous, like Bono's use of a
single expletive after he won a Golden Globe award ,and the fines
excessive, most notably the
$550,000 imposed on Viacom for Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction at
last year's Superbowl championship"

Can someone enlighten an ignoramus who lives on the wrong side of the pond
what exactly a "Wardrobe Malfunction" is and why this nasty phenomena should
results in the loss of over Half a Million bucks?? 
 
Yours Truly

Mongolia

I feel a bit envious of our friends across the pond who have not been
subjected to endless "wardrobe malfunction" jokes. ;-)

The reference is to an incident that occurred during last year's
halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a huge,
extremely popular American football event which is televised
nationwide. For many years, there has been a tradition of presenting
big-name entertainers at the midpoint of the game. This halftime show
is performed live, not on videotape, so there is no opportunity to
correct or edit any objectionable material.

The infamous 2004 Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction" occurred at the end
of a duet by singers Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Timberlake
pulled a portion of Jackson's costume off, exposing Jackson's bare
right breast. Afterward, a spokesman for Janet Jackson issued a
statement calling the incident "a malfunction of the wardrobe." Justin
Timberlake used the term "wardrobe malfunction" in his public apology,
and hundreds of satirists and stand-up comedians seized the phrase and
milked it, so to speak.

Explanations were issued right and left by those associated with the
show. There were hundreds of thousands of complaints from viewers, and
there was a formal investigation by the Federal Communications
Commission (the government agency which is in charge of enforcing
broadcast television's standards of propriety in the United States).
The FCC, which in recent times has been very strict on matters of
naughtiness, imposed a huge fine upon the CBS television network.

"The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined the TV Network for
broadcasting the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake debacle in
February, earlier this year. More than a half a million viewers
complained following the supposed 'wardrobe malfunction' that exposed
the singer during a performance at the Super Bowl.

The $500,000 (£269,359) fine was imposed on CBS' twenty stations
amounting to $27,500 per station, after the FCC determined the event
to have been preplanned.

CBS has appealed stating that although it recognised and understood
the need to crackdown on indecency it denied that the incident
violated the standards required."

Sound Generator
http://www.soundgenerator.com/news/index.cfm?articleid=4421

You can learn much more than you probably want to know about all this
by using this Google search:

Google Web Search: "janet jackson" superbowl OR "super bowl" "wardrobe malfunction"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22janet+jackson%22+superbowl+OR+%22super+bowl%22+%22wardrobe+malfunction%22

I hope this clears things up. If you have any questions (other than
"Why did people get so upset about the sight of a woman's breast?),
please let me know.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Dear Pinkfreud
AS always you have more than adequately bared the facts (oops I think
this pun is now getting somewhat tedious)
Regards
Mongolia

And rather well formed too, but we?ve all seen it before. Perhaps it
would have been wiser to have bared to the left rather than right.

Best

I cannot bare this any longer!

It's important to keep in mind that a 30 second commercial during the
superbowl is sold by CBS for over $2,000,000.  The $500,000 fine was a
slap on the wrist relative to the hundreds of millions of dollars
involved with the superbowl.

However, I'm certain the message came across loud and clear that fines
can and will get steep if this continues.

There's a parallel with the BBC's recent screening of "Jerry Springer
- The Musical".  Answering the question of how the BBC should respond
to the thousands of complaints, a spokesman pointed out that there's
software out there designed specificaly to generate huge numbers of
similar but different e-mails, sent out under different aliases, all
complaining about a single issue. Maybe Pinkfreud's question "Why did
people get so upset about the sight of a woman's breast?" should just
be "Did people get so upset about the sight of a woman's breast?".

Ian G.

It?s just occurred to me (bit slow) that it was a storm in a D cup. Ha
ha ha ha ha -- oh please yourself.

Best

Ha!  I positively never heard the expression until I saw this
question.  And I'm on this side of the pond.  So I was interested in
the explanation too.  That language probably came straight out of the
Marketing department--maybe even before the fact, if the thing was
staged.

Archae0pteryx

First of all, nice one guzzi
Second, as to iang's comment. You might want to check out this
Slashdot article on complaints to the FCC
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/06/231234&tid=153&tid=219
I don't know if it relats specifly to the super bowl insident.

Just a note:

Super Bowl Sunday is tomorrow, February 6. I must have heard the
phrase "wardrobe malfunction" at least fifty times in the past few
days. Sports accomplishments are easily forgotten, but a woman's
breast seen for a few seconds makes history. Sigh.

The promise is that this year's halftime entertainment will be
family-friendly, whatever that means.

To my dismay (but not my surprise), Google News currently turns up
nearly 3500 references to "wardrobe malfunction" in presumably
legitimate news sources:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22wardrobe+malfunction%22

I suppose this is what is meant by "keeping abreast of the news."