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Well, here’s another shocker. After looking over the script and attending the actual taping of "Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show" starring Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein, Microsoft pulled out of their somewhat controversial (and heavily mocked) sponsorship of the show. This sponsorship was to include no commercials, but include marketing spots for Win 7 worked right into the show itself. The show will go on Nov 8th, but Fox is looking for a new sponsor.

Says Microsoft…

"We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of ‘Family Guy,’ but after reviewing an early version of the variety show, it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand.”

So what content “didn’t fit with the Windows brand”? Well…

Looks like Microsoft got a bit panicky over typical (and predictable) Family Guy stuff like…

• Mocking deaf people
• The Holocaust
• Feminine hygiene
• Incest
• Latina housekeepers

Yeah, hard to think of the mash-up some web wiseguy would do of Seth MacFarlane cracking wise about Microsoft and incest with those cute Win 7 commercials of Kylie. All those unicorns….>shudder<.

It would be a typical Jobsian coup (and make for LOTS more “PC vs Mac” style hipster humor) for Apple to now step in as sponsor but Holocaust and incest humor might be a little edgy even for Cupertino, especially as Apple is making a bigger bid for the mainstream market.

I am all for taking chances in Marketing….but especially considering Bill Gates’ past appearances on Family Guy (like the one below), what WAS Redmond thinking?

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Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).