Yes, That Was Dead Air During the Telecast

One of the commercial breaks generating a lot of buzz during the Super Bowl wasn't actually a commercial at all. TV screens went black for about 30 seconds after NBC cut to a commercial in the second quarter following a Philadelphia touchdown, reports CBS. While some may have suspected some bizarro ad message, NBC later tweeted an explanation: "We had a brief equipment failure that we quickly resolved. No game action or commercial time were missed." As USA Today notes, a 30-second ad during the game costs about $5 million. Twitter had all kinds of fun, with lots of comments like this: "Best Super Bowl commercial so far has been 'empty black screen.'" (More Super Bowl stories.)