There’s an ad that plays a lot around here, it’s for Claritin or Allegra or something like that. The voiceover talks about allergy sufferers in the South, and the commercial is packed with ‘Southern’ images like people riding horses, black people dancing in dusty bars, and people with really bad hair. The commercial ends with a bunch of people watching the shuttle launch and cheering.
Hmm, maybe they will just cut the last part.
Why do you think they will cut it?
Something similar happened back in 1986. Ford had advertisements touting the aerodynamic design of their Aerostar minivan, comparing the slope of its hood and windshield with the front profile of the shuttle orbiter. The ads disappeared very quickly after the Challenger explosion.
Didn’t the same thing happen with the classic astronaut/rocket launch clip on MTV, around the same time?
(Sidenote: I had been taping old WKRP episodes off TNN every day in September 2001, and one of my faves, the “phone cops/bomb at the transmitter,” was scheduled for the Monday after September 11. They didn’t run it. 
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I think (unless this is a manufactured memory), a similar thing happened on UK/Irish TV - there’s a really good ad for Smirnoff Vodka, with a dog sitting at a piano, entertaining people in the style of the Rat Pack. Before playing “That’s Life”, he gives a comic preamble: “She had beautiful long blond hair… all over her body. She was an Afghan! So one day I catch her in another guy’s basket. I wasn’t gonna argue - he was a Boxer. She said ‘whaddya expect? I’m a bitch!’”
Shortly after 9/11, the “Afghan” line disappeared from the ad.
They also skipped an episode of DBZ after 9/11. It featured a burning building.
They also cancelled the first airing of Mobile Suit Gundam, which (among other things) showed a space colony deliberately crashed into Sydney, Australia.
I used to work for USA TODAY, which had full page airline ads nearly every day. Whenever there was a high-profile airplane crash, the airlines pulled the ads and we had to replace them with full-page house ads (sometimes in the middle of a press run).
The mad-bomber episode of Cowboy Bebop was right out.
Sony’s probably not going to be airing their “When your kids ask you where their inheritance went, show them the tape” commercial of the retired gentleman taking a Russian Rocket up to the ISS, that they premeried at the last Superbowl. Even without a shuttle in it, I doubt they’d feel comfortable continuing with that one.
In the summer of 1997, Weight Watchers was running an ad with the Duchess of York joking that losing weight was “harder than outrunning the papparazzi.” That was yanked off the air in a hurry!
We do that in broadcasting too, pull all the plane ads after a crash. I also pulled a bunch of financial planning spots off the air on Sept 11…so many firms had offices in the Towers.
It’s a brilliant ad and if Sony pulls it, I’ll never buy anything from them again.
I wonder if the HP ads will continue with the spacesuit-clad person walking to his house, with a voice-over “Helping NASA get astronauts home safely.” At least the was the gist of it.
Remember the New York Life ad that showed a guy sneezing resulting in the collapse of several skyscrapers? Never aired after 9/11/01.
Last night VH1 Classic played Fishbone’s Party at Ground Zero. What a great song. Too bad we’ll never hear it ever again.
I always wonder who’s job it is at radio stations to listen to the news and make sure inappropriate records (like ‘Drop The Pilot’ after a plane crash for instance) aren’t played?
I remember that during coverage of the bombing of the Oaklahoma City Federal Building the station cut away to commercials – one was an Energizer commercial featuring a mad scientist guy trying to stop the bunny from “Going and going…” by slipping him a bomb (the cartoony kind that looks like a bowling ball with a fuse). The bunny promtly nudges it, rolling it under the van where the mad scientist guy was hiding. Boom.
Didn’t see that commercial ever again.
I totally disagree. The “ground zero” phrase in the song has a different meaning than the one used in reference to the WTC. While I could see programmers pulling it immediately after 9/11, I don’t see the song permanently dissappearing.