ABC Bans 'Cougar Life' Commercial During Courteney Cox's "Cougar Town"

[Brian Damage]

ABC Bans 'Cougar Life' Commercial During Courteney Cox's 'Cougar Town'

In a strange move, ABC pulled the plug on a commercial promoting cougar behavior during the Wednesday night premiere of Courteney Cox’s new show "Cougar Town."

Claudia Openkelder, the founder of popular dating website CougarLife.com (for women who seek younger men) reportedly worked directly with ABC on creating an ad that would be beneficial to both parties and after a great deal of negotiations submitted a 60 second spot that got the green light from the network. The ad was scheduled to run during the highly-anticipated "Cougar Town," when at the last minute the big wigs at ABC determined that while they had no problem with the content of the commercial, they did have a problem with the site itself.

Apparently the TV execs no longer felt it was appropriate to condone a site that promotes cougar behavior. Now, naturally, Openkelder (a cougar herself who also starred in the TV spot) has asked all women to boycott the new series for what she calls sexist discrimination.

Openkelder claimed she was blindsided by ABC’s last minute notification that they would not air the commercial as they were part of the whole creative process, including approval of the storyboards and script.

"It appears the executives at ABC seem a little too insecure to allow the notion of real world cougars to exist anywhere other than in the realm of fiction," Openkelder said in a statement on Wednesday.

However Tarts has learned exclusively that the commercial will infact see the light of day on NBC and during the Ellen DeGeneres show.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,554816,00.html

[Brian Damage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlrR_...layer_embedded