As far as the half-time show went, it was certainly a safe bet having Tom Petty on as the act. As expected, the band sounded good and played through a tame set of familiar hits like “American Girl”, “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Falling” and “Runnin’ Down A Dream”. We were surprised to see the guitar player pull out the double necked electric at one point – but that’s about as risque as it got.

There was news a few days ago that Mark Oliver Everett – or “E” as he’s known – from the Eels was going to put on a one second ad during the Super Bowl for their upcoming album, ‘Useless Trinkets’. The ad was supposed to be of E saying the first letter of the new album title – the letter “U” and would have been the shortest TV ad ever used during the Super Bowl, at the cost of a mere $100,000.

I’ve just found out that it didn’t air, and E has stated, “In the end we were told that the NFL would have to find 29 other advertisers to buy 1 second spots to fill a standard 30 second advertising slot and that they do not sell advertising time by the second. They also noted that a rapid fire 30 second segment of thirty 1 second commercials could cause people with certain medical conditions to have seizures and that it was against network regulations.”

That’s too bad. The good thing, though, is that you can still see a video of the 1 second ad here, and a 5 second version here.

We were watching the game on the BBC in England, so this was the first time that I’ve ever watched the Super Bowl with no ads. Not even British ads this year, which was great. Especially since a lot of people in England don’t like watching the NFL because of all the ads.

Anyway, congrats to the NY Giants fans – it was a close game. Condolences go out to my fellow Pats fans!

By: Jenny May – BandWeblogs.com