Super Bowl show vows to keep it clean

Every gyration has been vetted, every costume reviewed, every song scrutinized, and every lighting cue considered.

This season, the National Football League is taking precautions to ensure that there are no malfunctions — wardrobe or otherwise — in its halftime show at the Super Bowl on Feb. 6 in Jacksonville, Fla.

The league prompted nationwide outrage and drew congressional rebukes with its show at last year’s game in which singer Janet Jackson’s right breast — inadvertently, she said — was exposed.

Miss Jackson and singer Justin Timberlake, her accomplice in that performance, are out. Also gone is MTV, which produced the show criticized not just for what Mr. Timberlake described as a “wardrobe malfunction,” but for its overall risque tone.

In this year is caution. The National Football League did not resort to the bland stylings of Up With People to restore the tarnished brand of the Super Bowl, but the league is putting on a show that plays it much safer.

Pop great Paul McCartney is the star of the halftime show; and John Fogerty; the Charlie Daniels Band; Earth, Wind and Fire; and Alicia Keys are among the pre-game entertainers.

The show is being produced by Don Mischer Productions, a company that has put on the opening ceremonies for the Olympics and the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

New policies have joined the new personnel. NFL officials, working with Mischer, have scrutinized every element of the pre-game and halftime entertainment, down to wardrobe, set lists, dance routines and lighting cues.

Mr. McCartney, not seen as a threat to offend anyone, underwent repeated reviews of every nuance of his 12-minute performance.

The NFL last week fired Los Lonely Boys, a Texas rock band scheduled to play at a league-organized concert the night before the game, after the group’s drummer was arrested for marijuana possession.

“We are now extremely involved with every aspect of the [entertainment] production, from soup to nuts,” said Charles Coplin, NFL vice president of programming. “Every part of this is being scrutinized from a technical and logistics standpoint and how the themes and messaging fits in with what we’re trying to do.”

The league also plans a tribute to the U.S. military and a live pre-game appearance on Fox, which is broadcasting the game, by former President Bill Clinton and former President George Bush to call for donations for Indian Ocean tsunami relief.

The stakes are massive for the league, Fox and advertisers.

The Super Bowl generates more than $140 million in advertising revenue for the network broadcasting the game, and the game is the anchor for the television riches that help make the NFL a $5 billion per year sports colossus.

More broadly, the Super Bowl stands as an unofficial American holiday and one of the last truly communal experiences left in pop culture.

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