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Outrage followed swiftly after the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and MTV all released statements apologizing for the incident to various degrees, but the damage was done with the moment that landed CBS in hot water with the FCC. The chairman at the time, Michael Powell, said in a statement published by The Washington Post, “I am outraged at what I saw during the halftime show of the Super Bowl. Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation’s children, parents and citizens deserve better.”
The FCC issued CBS a $550,000 fine after reportedly receiving roughly 540,000 complaints. However, an appeals court later tossed out the fine. Aside from Super Bowl halftime shows becoming decidedly safer in the aftermath of Janet Jackson (Paul McCartney would perform the following year), the incident impacted the zeitgeist in various other ways.
For starters, the term “wardrobe malfunction” was coined following the incident, which refers to any piece of clothing that moves out of position to reveal more sensitive areas of a person’s body. Additionally, Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl halftime show also influenced the creation of YouTube. The co-founders of YouTube have said the performance, as well as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, inspired them to create YouTube because, before then, it was difficult to track down videos of said incidents.
