Girls Gone Wild: Vatican City Breaks Sales Records

By Akela Talamasca on April 14th, 2009

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Please excuse the misleading title; it was too good to resist. During the 2 AM live telecast of the Vatican’s Good Friday service in Philadelphia, Comcast accidentally aired a “Girls Gone Wild” advertisement, resulting in that video company’s largest sales spike on record.

“It seems that many of the same people interested in the Pope’s message are also interested in ours,” said the softcore porn company CEO Joe Francis. Apparently the airing was due to a test of Comcast’s emergency alert system, which supersedes specialized programming with regular programming. Despite the unfortunate juxtaposition of subject matter, only one person called to complain.

Where to begin? This is a rich vein of hilarity waiting to be tapped. First of all, it’s delightful that Francis made the leap in supposition that viewers who would tune in to watch a Good Friday service would be the same audience that would buy a Girls Gone Wild tape, but given the industry the guy’s in, he clearly has no problem with indulging unsupported fantasy.

Second of all, the referring article’s author mentions that Francis’s claim to have broken a sales record by airing at 2 AM in a single market may be the CEO stretching the truth just to make a sensational claim. Personally, I have no trouble believing that statement — 1) He might have been saying that sales records specifically for that market at that hour were broken, and 2) Maybe sales are terrible in that market to begin with. Even one sale in a history of no sales is a record-breaker.

And finally, I love the idea of Girls Gone Wild ads as being part of any emergency alert system anywhere. Some late-night programming engineer is monitoring what’s on the air, and seeing the Pope suddenly appear, exclaims “Oh no, piety!” and hits the Emergency GGW button as an antidote. Late-night TV-watching troglodytes everywhere breathe a sigh of relief, and reach for another brewski. Disaster averted, Philly. Nice work!