Imagine my delight when a friend & colleague posted a note to my Facebook wall alerting me to the fact that Katy Perry had appeared under what looked to be a replica of the classic “The More You Know” star, made famous in the NBC PSAs of our youth.

Below is an example, a 1990 Will Smith PSA on the benefits of staying in school.

And here is Katy Perry performing “Firework” during Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show:

And, because the internet is awesome, here’s a side-by-side comparison…

…and a mash-up:

As a scholar of media conglomerates and the logics that govern their operations, I have found the entire event immensely fun.  The question I got peppered with (well, if you count three friends’ comments as “peppering”) had to do with whether or not I thought Perry’s production was an example of planned cross-promotion, as the Super Bowl aired on NBC this year.

The short answer is that I don’t know.  I do know NBC was very quick to take advantage of the situation, tweeting out the “More You Know” logo at 7:23pm Eastern–a tweet that has been retweeted over 4000 times, typically with comments like “Nicely played, NBC!”  That tweet alone helped people make the connection between Perry’s performance, the PSA series, and NBC. Although many people of a certain age are likely to remember the PSAs, it’s quite likely that they would not remember them to be an NBC product.  NBC’s quick thinking (or advance knowledge and planning, perhaps) aided in closing the loop to take full advantage of the cross-promotional opportunity.

The long answer is that I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either—because NBC definitely doesn’t.  I’ve been grinning about this all week, because it beautifully illustrates something crucial to understanding the nature of cross-promotion: it doesn’t matter if it’s pre-planned or not, and it works better when it doesn’t appear to be arranged.

Like all forms of product integration, where advertisements are embedded within content, cross-promotion works by appearing “natural” and “organic” to that content.  When Jimmy Fallon has stars of NBC TV series on The Tonight Show, it’s an instance of cross-promotion, but it wouldn’t necessarily strike anyone as odd because Jimmy Fallon has lots of stars on The Tonight Show.  The star’s appearance on Fallon offers a potential double win for NBC; the star may draw fans to The Tonight Show, and the appearance might draw Fallon fans to the star’s series.  And that, of course, is the logic behind cross-promotion.  The risk NBC takes in engineering these opportunities is that if the audience feels duped, or like the network is trying to trick them, they might be turned off—but that sort of reaction is highly unlikely if the cross-promotion is thoughtfully conducted and unobtrusive.

And therein lies the beauty of Katy Perry’s ride on the “The More You Know” star at Super Bowl XLIX: it appeared to just happen with no forethought.  That sense of happenstance was a huge win for NBC, as audiences got to feel smart by noticing it, tweeting about it, commenting on Facebook, or saying something to their friends at the Super Bowl party.  That reward coupled with an accompanying nostalgia for an era when NBC was enjoying the height of their must-see-TV glory days imbues the entire incident with a rosy glow for audiences and, in turn, for the network.  Just as the appearance of an NBC star on Fallon offers a potential double win for NBC, so does a situation like this.

If it was pre-planned, it was an absolutely genius move made even better by no one from Perry’s camp or NBC stepping forward to claim credit for thinking of it.  If it wasn’t pre-planned, NBC got really lucky with Perry generating nostalgia for a PSA campaign that they could link to their network.  And whoever was manning the Twitter account on Sunday deserves a bonus.

I can hear the higher-ups at NBC now, gleefully counting up the many folks who ventured to YouTube to look up videos of 1990s PSAs, only to be flooded with warmth and affection for the bygone days of the network.  “Oh man…remember when NBC had Friends?  And ER?  And Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”  NBC remembers, and they’re glad that now you do too.  And it’s all because Katy Perry rode a star around a football stadium on national TV.

Oprah ventriloquizes the sentiments of the American nation (“we”) toward its military personnel (“you”).  A gauzy montage of domestic scenes that begins during deployment and ends with homecoming, “Whole Again” represents absence through family rituals that are conspicuously incomplete.  One parent seated beside an unoccupied seat watches a school basketball game, dinner is served over an empty chair, a father struggles to button his daughter’s sweater, a mother strokes her sleeping child’s hair while gazing across the bedroom at her husband’s framed photograph.  Everyone seems to be staring sidelong into the distance, beneath Oprah’s voiceover and orchestral music.  Jeeps appear only at the end, as the vehicles military personnel drive home to where ‘we’ wait.

On our behalf, Oprah promises a list of pleasantly quotidian experiences that await the soldier upon returning, like a family dinner and a warm bed.  She vows, “there will be walks to take.”  At this, a golden retriever, who had been looking expectantly off-screen drops his head to the floor dejectedly, but determinedly.  Rather than getting up and walking away, the dog enacts a faithful version of citizenship, maintaining a vigil despite being lonely or impatient.  This is a calm, durable loyalty, rather than a frenetic form of grief that might verge on something messy or unwieldy.   The commercial maps the shortest route to our fondest, dogged desire as the deferral of gratification.  Like the dog, we are bereft, but the appropriate expression is not a sadness that might devolve into anger at the state or its foreign policy, but quiet and steady forbearance.

But if lying around on the carpet seems too passive, Oprah also makes clear that other things happened during the soldier’s absence.  The happy familial future is guaranteed simply “because in your home, in our hearts, you’ve been missed, you’ve been needed, you’ve been cried for …”  Now, we are a pretty young mother ignoring our toddler in a sunlit kitchen, wiping away our tears while reading a letter.  Contextually, the most obvious explanation for her sadness would be that her husband had been killed in action, but the commercial does not even acknowledge such a possibility.  It promises a safe and happy return, but on the condition that we all do our parts (including crying) at home to ensure it.

While we are crying as her, we are also praying as a red-headed boy kneeling beside his bed, doing his part to confirm that you’ve been “prayed for,” too.  We are fervent in close-mouthed prayer, and the next time a soldier appears after that, he is looking down at a picture of a pretty woman on his dogtags, sighing; then the door of a Jeep closes, presumably around someone homeward-bound.  The arc of the montage suggests a causal connection between missing / needing / crying / praying and this outcome.  The narrative posits that it would be impossible to do anything more, dangerously tempting of fate to do anything less.  The childish praying that ‘we’ are doing is, presumably, simply for a safe return of the people that we love, but this, of course, is not a remedy for circumstances that require their absence in the first place, or that might take them away again for another deployment.  Instead, this is citizenship as superstition.   “Whole Again” oscillates wildly between visions of unbounded agency (we, alone, can prayerfully facilitate the return of our loved ones – no mention even of the God to whom we might direct our entreaties) and acknowledgments of radical constraint (all we can do is sit at the table and cry).

Finally, as Jeep-encased service members speed down flag-lined streets to their loving families, Oprah makes a cryptic claim.  “Half the battle,” she professes, “is just knowing this is half the battle.”  But there is no clear visual referent for what this is; the quick cuts between a Jeep driving along a rural road, uniformed soldiers disembarking a plane, a woman overcome with emotion amount to nothing.  I’m perplexed by this ending, and no one else among the dozens I’ve shown this to has been able to decipher it either.  Perhaps half of “half the battle” is figuring out what this is.  That inscrutability might explain the failure of “Whole Again” as an advertisement, but it also, if quite accidentally, captures the uncertainty that characterizes this form of wartime citizenship, where so much is nonsensical but also, apparently, necessary.

1) Not as many people tuned into the Super Bowl on February 3rd as the previous 2 years, but it still managed to be the 3rd most watched game despite the 34 minute blackout during the game, which some brands used to their advantage.  The game also failed to boost ratings for the CBS Monday lineup. Many viewed the Super Bowl ads as disappointing and not reflexive of the interests of younger generations.  However, the game set a record for the most social media interactions connected to an event.  Some campaigns used social media prior to the game, for example Budweiser’s campaign to get people to offer suggestions and vote on the name of the baby Clydesdale used in their ad this year (They chose Hope).  The FCC decided to ignore Joe Flacco’s swearing at the end of the game, which has sparked very little backlash.

2) Netflix released all 13 episodes of House of Cards, its original series, on Feb. 1st.  While Netflix execs have been reluctant to release viewer statistics, general buzz suggests that the show’s premiere was a success, and it has been generating a lot of talk about what this means for both Netflix and the future of TV viewing.  Netflix plans to continue creating original programming, both another season of House of Cards and a children’s show, Turbo, in conjunction with DreamWorks.  Netflix was also facing a court case from shareholders who felt that the company misled them by inflating its share price, but the case was thrown out.

3) Network and cable TV have been dealing with their own issues, such as a big ratings slump for NBC that might cause some mid-season shifts in the schedule.  Comcast purchased the remaining shares of NBC from its former parent company GE.  As a side note, in an unusual bid for Oscar attention, Warner Brothers bought 30 minutes of prime time on NBC to promote Argo.   CBS tried to use online extras to generate excitement for the Grammy awards.  CBS also acquired a share in AXS TV in exchange for programming and marketing.  Time Warner is increasing original programming on TNT and TBS, and FX continues to use dark, risque material to draw fans and create a niche for themselves.

4)  xbox remains the top selling gaming system for the 25th month in a row, selling over 281 thousand units in January.  But could it be that in the future Apple will overtake the gaming system market?

5) Some news on film distribution around the globe: European TV stations are not acquiring as many art cinema films, leaving even successful distributors in a difficult situation when trying to find an audience for these films.  In Japan, hulu.jp is experimenting with allowing a limited number of people to stream a film, Sougen no isu, for free before it is released theatrically.

6) Barnes and Noble had another disappointing quarter.  Book sales are not in trouble everywhere though, India’s publishing industry is showing steady growth despite the decrease in global markets.  Amazon is attempting to break into the ebook market in China, but is facing several obstacles including the lack of available kindles for purchase and piracy issues.  Apple’s ibookstore highlights self-published books, perhaps another sign of the changing print industry landscape.

7) The house subcommittee met to talk about preserving global internet freedom from government control.  On other internet news, AOL had surprisingly good 4th quarter revenues.  They have also re-branded their advertising.com group as AOL Networks, to emphasize the link with its parent company.

8) The Grammy awards took place on February 10th, setting the second largest record for social media interactions.  The awards led to an increase in album sales from the previous week, although the numbers are down from where they were at this time last year.  In other music news, Lady Gaga’s tour has been cancelled due to a hip injury, and approximately 200 thousand tickets will have to be refunded.

9) Dell Inc. goes private in a $24 billion leveraged buyout, in an attempt to rework the company to provide a wide range of products for corporations.  In other buyout news, John Malone’s Liberty Global acquired UK’s Virgin Media, putting him in position to compete in the UK’s pay TV market.

10) Some fun things to end with: Remember tamagotchi keychain pets?  Well now there’s an app for that.  Currently only available for Android devices, it should be available for Apple in the near future.  For those fans of the Alamo Draft House in Austin, they announced plans to open a second location in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  And this week’s newest internet sensation… Doing the Harlem Shake (and thinking about how to get the most out of it)

Star NFL linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide in May 2012. It was later concluded that he suffered from chronic brain damage.

Each year, it becomes a little harder to be a football fan. I have loved the game since I was 11, and I always intellectualized it, an attitude that is now rewarded with the renaissance in football analysis online.  But while I could somehow always look past the politics of the game, the new findings on concussions seem to be a whole other level of destruction visited upon the bodies of players.

It may be Super Bowl week, but concussions are in the news.  The Atlantic ran a short piece on scans showing brain damage in living former players.  Scans of Junior Seau’s brain show that he had a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma at the time of his death even though, according to the NFL, he “never” had a concussion.  The news is only going to get worse, not better, for the NFL.  Helmet technology is not going to save players, especially when there’s resistance to even marginally better helmets.  Players who have come up in the system won’t report concussions when they should (they’re the same with other injuries) and the league head office seems mostly interested in head injuries as a PR problem, a problem that continues to get worse as public figures–including the US president now–say they would not let their sons play the sport competitively.  I can imagine two possible futures for football in this situation.

1.  The first is that the game will continue to change to the point that it is substantially different from what it is even today.  Obama isn’t the first president to weigh in on football violence.  If we go back to the 19th century, people were getting killed because of the rules.  In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban organized football, because college students were getting killed off–the 1905 season saw 19 player deaths and countless major injuries (Roosevelt’s own son played for Harvard and suffered a malicious broken nose).  In response, the NCAA legalized the forward pass and changed several other rules, such as banning mass formations and the creation of a neutral zone at the line of scrimmage.  This was after rules changes in 1894 banning the flying wedge and other exceedingly violent tactics.

From the standpoint of concussions, we are at some point before 1894.  If someone like Seau can go through his career “without” a concussion (note the scarequotes) and probably die as a result of brain injuries, then massive reforms are needed.  I don’t have a clear program, but in essence what we’re looking at is either a transformation of player equipment to make it less possible for them to hit each other as violently as they do, or a transformation of the rules to further favor offensive players, perhaps making it more like arena football or flag football.

2.  The other future for football is visible in the state of boxing today.  Boxing was a major American sport for a large chunk of the 20th century.  Boxers were cultural icons and the sport, like football, developed a following among intellectuals.  But today, it’s fan base is heavily diminished.  It has lost a good deal of its cultural respectability, its cache with fans, reporters and writers, and most importantly, with parents whose children might go into the sport.  Part of this is a business question, having to do with boxing’s relationship with television, and the challenges it now faces from competitors like the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  But boxing also declined because its violence went from being aestheticized by sportswriters and other intellectuals–as “the sweet science”–to being deplored by those same people.  The NFL and NCAA clearly have good media sense, and it is possible that their PR machine can hold back the attacks that will come as more information about the extent and effect of player concussions is revealed.  Perhaps football will become more of a lower class sport, as parents who have intellectual or knowledge-economy ambitions for their kids move away from it.  It’s one thing to think your kid might break a bone or tear a muscle from playing a sport.  The prospect of brain damage resonates quite differently with parents.

Today, boxing suffers from an association with its athletes as members of a disposable class of society.  If football’s rules don’t change, it risks joining boxing as a sport whose athletes will be imagined as disposable people–even more than they are now.

However much I like the sport, and however much money is behind it, I don’t think we’ll see the same game in a generation’s time.

There’s no doubt that the cinematically beautiful ad stood out among the animal tricks, movie trailers, sexism, and slapstick comedy of the Super Bowl’s typical offerings. The 120-second ad aired at halftime, costing Chrysler $12.8 million during the most watched television program of all time. It skillfully combines sound track, motion (they’re selling cars, after all!), and lighting to grab the audience’s attention and emotions. The ad begins with Eastwood walking off a football field as if to the locker room at halftime. He compares the Super Bowl’s halftime to the current economic downturn in the United States, suggesting “we’re all scared ‘cause this isn’t a game.” The ad’s visuals of American landscapes fade to industrial images of work as Eastwood recounts how the people of Detroit “almost lost everything.” Functioning as metaphorical football coach, Eastwood uses Detroit as a metonym for the US by comparing Detroit’s supposed revival to the nation’s current struggles, stressing that “Motor City is fighting again.”

At the commercial’s midpoint, the images of working class people and neighborhoods give way to brighter, optimistic images of American people, and a swelling soundtrack. We’re told that Americans survived tough times in the past because we “all rallied around what was right and acted as one.” The music stops and the camera focuses on Eastwood’s worn, rugged face. He snarls in his gritty, Dirty Harry voice: “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world’s gonna hear the roar of our engines.”

In the days since the Super Bowl, the ad has been praised, parodied and panned. Political conservatives have attacked the ad, suggesting that its use of “halftime in America” is a thinly veiled reference to Obama’s campaign for a second term, a move they claim is promotional payback for the corporate bailout money the Obama administration gave Chrysler and GM (they fail to mention that the bailout was a Bush initiative). These allegations seem a bit odd given Eastwood’s very public alignment with libertarianism, and the ad’s obvious reference to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign ad “Morning in America.”

What the buzz around this ad overlooks is its ideological message: by comparing US citizens to Super Bowl players, Chrysler artfully ties an aggressive nationalism to working class pride and automobiles. Its warning that in the past “the fog of division, discord and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead” instructs Americans to stop asking questions about how the move from an industrial to a service economy has impacted American workers, and how we got into this financial mess in the first place. Its visuals suggest that protests for better treatment and pay are holding back the US, and its soundtrack stresses that “all that matters is what’s ahead.”

Though to some it may seem commonsensical to use sports metaphors to describe our economy and cast our supposedly inevitable return to world dominance in antagonistic terms, we should question how this 2-minute ad unites visuals, audio, and ideology, and why it chooses to do so in these terms. Eastwood’s presence in the ad makes it easy to forget that Chrysler is the halftime coach here, and the company uses images of Detroit and the working class to implore workers to drop their demands, “pull together,” and rebuild their faith in industry and big business. Eastwood says our focus should be on “winning,” but winning what? Dominance in the global marketplace may be “winning” to US companies, but it does not guarantee security to American citizens.

Fiske skillfully uses Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to remind us that victories are never inevitable and power is always up for grabs. In this sense, it’s always “halftime in America.” I don’t need Chrysler’s pep talk to feel hopeful that the United States will rebound from these difficult economic times, in part because I find hope in movements like Occupy Wall Street that seek to unravel the discourses of globalization, progress, and corporate entitlement that have largely dismantled national support for workers’ rights. After too much time spent ruminating on Chrysler’s ad, I am more certain than ever that television criticism and ideological analysis are crucial components of the social change we need to move through this crisis–and believe we must continue to use them on every televisual text, no matter how big or small.

Before the Super Bowl aired this past Sunday, host network NBC aired this gem of a promotional video.  (Go ahead and watch it if you haven’t already, or again.  I’ll wait.)

As Josef Adalian notes, this type of rousing “all hands on deck” campaign used to be de rigeur for networks from the 1970s to the 1990s, but its use here highlights what I see as one of NBC’s greatest strengths, and also its potential weakness.

To my mind, this number beautifully sums up what sets NBC apart from its broadcast competitors: the sense that all the folks at NBC are really just one big, happy family.  Even in the face of lagging ratings (they’re in a tie for fourth with Univision, at last count), an inability to find a hit, and faint praise for their entertainment chairman (“when you’re heading up the last-place network, the only direction to go is up”) who concedes that the network “had a really bad fall,” audiences, advertisers, and investors alike are still intrigued by the peacock network.  But why?

In part, I would argue, it’s due to NBC’s lasting image–and one they continue to bank on–evidenced in the “Brotherhood of Man” spot.  NBC still seems like the broadcast network of yore, one more closely resembling the Hollywood studio system than contemporary niche-marketed television.  The sort of place where everyone looks sort of familiar, because you’ve seen them (likely on another NBC series) before.  The sort of environment in which you can imagine the network’s stars getting together for lunch, or cracking jokes together in the hallways. This is not a new strategy, of course–one can recall with relative ease the “Must-See TV” crossover nights of the 1990s, and the fact that NBC stars of the era tended to move on to…other NBC series.  Seeing Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett move across the weekly schedule feels like part of the NBC legacy, ultimately, and knowing that so many current NBC stars are actually friends behind the scenes works to cement this notion in audiences.

Or maybe it’s because NBC is so firmly associated with New York’s 30 Rock (the place, not the series).  From The Today Show to Brian Williams’ Rock Center to the eponymous series, Rockefeller Plaza has become the physical and emotional home of the network, with the result that it’s not difficult to imagine Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Fallon, Ann Curry, and Bob Harper dancing around outside the building.  All of this combines to delight audiences, prompting tweets like, “NBC shows singing Brotherhood of Man gave me chills! I love this so much!” and “This is what my dreams look like.”  And, perhaps my personal favorite, “Guys remember that time all the best NBC shows got together and sang Brotherhood of Man and I basically died? Me too.”

But NBC’s reliance on this image might be its albatross rather than its saving grace.  As Myles McNutt has argued here on Antenna, the network’s reluctance to move beyond its own legacy is actually holding it back.  As Jason Mittell pointed out to me when I posted the video to Facebook, the fact that “Brotherhood of Man” is centered so firmly around 30 Rock (the series, not the place) overestimates the series’ popularity.  Indeed, the poorly rated series proves the point, exemplifying NBC’s “we’re all friends here” sensibility in the form of longtime NBC-friendly personalities (Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan) while overlooking the fact that the show (and the network) are in some fairly serious trouble according to traditional metrics.

Nonetheless, the video reveals what I see as the fundamental strength of the network–the fact that, as the song goes, these stars truly are “proud to be…right here on NBC.”  The song’s actual lyrics in that moment are “proud to be…in that fraternity,” which I would contend is also an apt metaphor for the insidery network.  And as thrilled as the stars are, many audience members are equally happy to see them hanging out together enjoying one another’s company.  As one Tweeter commented, “Now this is a frat I’d pledge.”  Indeed.  And the network is banking on the fact that our desire to join the party will keep us coming back as they struggle to regain a spot at the top.

What does Madonna’s half-time performance mean? It might mean progress. That a female pop singer with a decades-long career is at the center of such masculinist spectacle instead of a big-tent rock band is still worth mention. Of course, we’ve seen pop stars play the half-time show. Britney Spears, N*Sync, rapper Nelly, and R&B singer Mary J. Blige performed with Aerosmith for Super Bowl XXXV, though I find it upsetting that “Walk This Way”—a song Rick Rubin pushed on Run DMC—is still deployed as an anthem for generic intermingling. But Super Bowl XLVI began with Kelly Clarkson belting the national anthem, which suggested that female entertainers’ presence on the stage was welcome and not noteworthy unto itself.

Madonna isn’t even the lone viable female performer, or at least not the only substitute for Janet Jackson. Björk might be too much of a niche artist, but she has no problem captivating Stephen Colbert’s audience or delivering a riveting performance at the Olympics. If Beyoncé weren’t on maternity leave, she’d strap on gold shoulder pads and charge the field with her all-female band. Women dominate pop music. A number of them project Madonna’s sense of drive and self-possession, which may better reflect of the spirit of athletic achievement than a group of guitar-slinging white dudes. Pete Townsend doesn’t know how to be a star like Tom Brady does, but Madonna either wrote the playbook or stole it.

But what is Madonna’s performance about? Her dense semiotic play always makes that question too daunting to answer. I have no idea why “World Peace” was displayed in lights at the end of her performance, though it contradicts the gladiator regalia, which is entirely in keeping with Madonna’s politics. I recognize that performing “Like a Prayer” was a loaded moment, but only if you knew that her Pepsi ad was pulled from the Super Bowl because of the song’s supposedly blasphemous music video. But I liked seeing her dance with an army of warrior women, many of whom were women of color. I liked seeing her crack wise with her queer-coded male dancers. I liked seeing her stick her tongue out with (at?) LMFAO. And I especially liked seeing her fumble a dance step on a set of bleachers and strut past the moment in stiletto boots like it was nothing.

Yet I have trouble working through Madonna’s collaboration with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on “Gimme All Your Lovin,” the lead single off her forth-coming album MDNA. To some extent, including these transnational pop stars—Minaj is from Queens by way of Trinidad, M.I.A. grew up in England and is of Sri Lankan descent—helps destabilize the notion of a home team. This was further illustrated by the rappers’ uneasy pairing of cheerleading uniforms with ethnic headdresses. As a football non-fan, I didn’t see as strong a sense of regional pride that I saw mobilize around the Saints and the Packers in previous years. Neither Eli Manning nor Tom Brady seems to represent their teams’ geographic location so much as function as tradable branded commodities.

Ultimately, I encounter the same problem that bell hooks articulates in her 1992 essay “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister”. I want to read Minaj and M.I.A.’s participation as progressive and recognize their agency in this participation. But Madonna’s model of liberal feminism so centralizes the blonde white woman who profits from patriarchal power while two female rappers of color hold pom poms for her. This is especially surprising, given Minaj’s fascinating vocal play and “sea-parting” cameo in Kanye West’s “Monster”.

M.I.A. is also a scene stealer. Her confrontationally pregnant Grammy performance with West, T.I., Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne still feels revolutionary to me. As a fan, I’m fascinated and troubled by how negative reception of her subaltern signification intensifies as she gets further away from an imagined Sri Lanka. What is she getting at with the video to “Bad Girls”? Is it a response to Beyoncé’s “(Girls) Who Run the World” refracted through the ugly American Orientalist materialism that sunk Sex and the City 2 and reframed by the women the film condescends against? Maybe.

However, I did like that Madonna performed with Cee-Lo instead of simply providing a platform for him. Yet I wonder whose performance  we were watching. M.I.A. prompted NBC and the NFL to speak out against her for raising her middle finger. Flipping the bird may have been an empty gesture, especially after she apologized for it. But what is perhaps even more telling is that Madonna hasn’t responded.

Ten (or more) media industry stories you might have missed recently:

1. Google has introduced a new social media service called Buzz. The biggest news surrounding it has been negative, though. In particular, privacy concerns abound, and some users have found themselves difficult situations thanks to Buzz’s autonomy. Google has responded with some fixes and suggestions, but Jeff Jarvis thinks Google would have been best off designating this as a Beta version in the first place. At least Buzz is better off than the dying MySpace, whose CEO resigned this week after only nine months on the job. TechCrunch says MySpace’s only hope is to separate from parent News Corp.

2. Social media came up with a great idea for traditional media: a Betty White fan started a Facebook page called Betty White To Host SNL (please?)!. The page now has over 280,000 fans (more than SNL’s own page). And the campaign has gotten a lot of mainstream attention and support, though SNL’s Olympics hiatus might cool the furor.

3. Mostly bad news for video games, as sales are down (2009 had the lowest average sales figures since 2005) and layoffs are up. Some think online gaming can rescue the industry. Or how about Microsoft figuring out how to design game consoles for the military? Finally, I got a kick out of this article: 10 Literary Classics That Should Be Videogames. I would totally play The Metamorphosis.

4. With the death of Miramax signaling the end of an era for indie cinema, some are questioning the future of independent film in an Avatar world. It’s a different story in the music industry: there indie music is thriving through advantages indie film apparently doesn’t have, while it’s the big music labels that are floundering. But Scott Macauley calls for a more nuanced understanding of independent cinema’s place, and Ted Hope thinks indie filmmakers can steal Hollywood’s “event picture” ideas for future success.

5. New York Magazine has a great in-depth profile on the madness that is Oscar campaigning. The Academy plans to do some campaigning of its own this year via social media. And The Root offers a (rather depressing) history of African-Americans at the Oscars.

6. Usually contemporary remakes of classical Hollywood movies are a bad idea from start to finish (The Women anyone? That’s right, no one). But the rumored Mildred Pierce remake at least has a few good things going for it: Todd Haynes, Kate Winslet, HBO. My only question: five hours?

7. Air America has died out, and some analysis of why and what’s next for liberal radio can be found at AlterNet, Huffington Post, the New York Times, and the LA Times.

8.  This week I learned about the Bechdel Test for films — 1) there are at least two named female characters, who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man — and was dismayed by how few recent films I could come up with that pass it. But The Wrap insists that female-driven blockbusters are all the rage. This is the position we’re put in: we’re supposed to be happy about Dear John hitting #1. Speaking of which, I’d like to take this opportunity to quote the great opening line from Roger Ebert’s review: “Lasse Hallstrom’s Dear John tells the heartbreaking story of two lovely young people who fail to find happiness together because they’re trapped in an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel.”

9. The Super Bowl ads were largely deemed to be awful this year, and they were especially denounced for being overwhelmingly misogynistic, emasculating, and all-around gender-disturbed. One good thing to come out of that: this YouTube response to the Dodge Charger ad.

10.  I’ll close with links to my own bloglinks, my favorite stories out of those I’ve posted on News for TV Majors recently: the Chuck-pocalypse, Survivor’s survival and the upside of reality tv, MTV’s dropping “music television” from its logo while Comcast renames its services Xfinity, Bones showrunner Hart Hanson gave an awesome keynote address about making TV for the masses, can Apple conquer TV?, and six Super Bowls later, CBS and the FCC still aren’t done with Janet Jackson.

One last thing: if you’ve still got nothing for Valentine’s Day, send your loved one a Lost card.

Less political but just as contentious in some quarters was the inclusion of The Who as the halftime act. There are a number of reasons for this debate, including the fact that The Who haven’t recorded and released any new music since 2005, and nothing of any cultural consequence since the early 1980s. As a longstanding staple of classic rock radio, the choice of The Who raised the eyebrows of many Internet critics and Twitterers. Watching the debate I couldn’t get over the fact that the children of “My Generation” were skewering one of their parent’s most iconic bands for being “out of touch”. I don’t know who should be playing the halftime show of the Super Bowl, but as far as rites go, The Who and the Super Bowl fit as well as you could expect. As comfortable as your dad/older brother’s well-worn copy of Quadrophenia, they are one of the very few musical acts in the world that a majority of the program’s listeners could say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of them at least once”.

This kind of mass recognition is the the point of Super Bowl programming, after all. In an era of fragmentation it’s the only media program left that has any kind of mass ritual component. Which, of course, is not only why so many debate its contents but why and how we , as scholars, should approach the program. So here’s a few suggestions for  media scholars and educator’s approaching next year’s event:

1) For those teaching media industries: even if you hate football and cannot stomach the thought of watching the Super Bowl, lead your students through a counterprogramming exercise. Even to the most inexperienced, it will become apparent that everything from television to local film theaters must acknowledge the presence of the 800 pound gorilla that will be SB XLV and allow you to drive home a number of points about media audiences and how media industries envision their composition and behaviors.

2) For those taking an anthropological or sociological slant on the games: A week before the game walk your students through local media sources in search of collective viewing options. This will allow you to illustrate how the program acts as a catalyst for explicit collective pleasures. See how churches, union halls, and other organizations use it as a moment to play together and ask them to discuss its importance to these groups. Also lead them to controversies where the NFL has shut down these parties and ask them to discuss how organizations vie for audiences. It will allow your students to better understand media programming act as explicit moments of sociality that sometimes confront other legal and financial aims.

3) For those teaching from a cultural studies point of view: After the program, ask students to list all of the debates that students participated in, both on and offline. If Janet Jackson and Tim Tebow have taught us anything, the Super Bowl is a moment where the connection between culture and politics become explicit. Use the opportunity in class to reiterate the most basic of cultural studies aims and make it clear that even if you didn’t watch the program, the fact that you could not avoid it may be the most interesting path of debate for scholars and students alike.

The CBS sports commentator who concluded, “Tonight the City of New Orleans embraced football,” doesn’t know the first thing about television reception.  On Superbowl Sunday 2010, viewers saw how a football team has embraced a city and its culture for decades.  Let me give some context.

First, this is how we watched the game.  Gold lamé and tutus, and the women dressed up too.  At the cincher play, an interception returned for a 74-yard touchdown, Deutsches Haus turned off the TV audio and played “When the Saints Come Marchin’ In” for a carnival parade of kings and queens, nuns and burlesque fairies waving white handkerchiefs high.  Mardi Gras, for the uninitiated, is a season here, not a day.  We’d been dressed out since morning for the four Sunday parades, including the all-dog Krewe of Barkus, strolling aptly to “When the Dogs Go Barking In.”

Television didn’t unify us.  The city has been on a high since the election results rolled in 15-hours earlier.  For the first time in recent memory, voters crossed racial lines en masse to elect a white mayor and a multiracial city council.  Television coverage of the city since Katrina has stressed divisions, ignoring the hybrid spaces and collaborative times that form a historically public culture.

Then, we danced downtown.  We took the “neutral ground,” a local word for the median that dates to colonial days as the place where French and Spaniards could meet without a turf scuffle.  In the street-turned-parking-lot, a black woman of maybe 60 years jumped out of her sedan and met in a jubilant squeeze with my towering white guy friend.  It was the first of many hugs, kisses, and high-fives with complete strangers that night.

Over the past four decades, the Saints became part of a public culture that erupts in New Orleans, a gumbo roux (locals, please pardon the cliché) that spills into the rue citywide.

This was the New Orleans I have always known, the one that drew me here before Katrina and the one that has kept me here.