NBC Erred in Airing Ad for ‘The Fan’

I thought I had seen it all with NBC’s Olympic coverage, which includes daily phony “live” broadcasts accompanied by dramatic movie music, maudlin up-close-and-personal athlete profiles and John Tesh posing as a sports reporter, but last Saturday night topped it all.

At 9 p.m. NBC aired a commercial for TriStar’s upcoming feature “The Fan.” In this movie Robert De Niro plays a psychotic sports fan who becomes obsessed and begins stalking Wesley Snipes, who plays a professional baseball player. In the commercial De Niro is seen making threatening phone calls and pulling a knife.

For TriStar and NBC to think this was appropriate to air during the Olympic Games was bad enough. To air this less than 24 hours after some nut planted a bomb in Olympic Park that killed two people and injured 100 is irresponsible. Somebody was certainly asleep at the switch.

MICHAEL Q. MARTIN

Sherman Oaks