The mystery of who will sponsor Seth MacFarlane's upcoming comedy special has been solved, and the answer turns out to be elementary indeed: Sherlock Holmes.
According to an announcement by Fox during Saturday's World Series pregame show, the 'Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show' special, which originally had been slated to be sponsored by Microsoft, will instead be backed by Warner Bros. as part of their promotional push for the upcoming Robert Downey, Jr. blockbuster 'Sherlock Holmes'.
Last week, Microsoft withdrew their support of the upcoming Nov. 8 special due to concerns about the show's material, which they said "was not a fit with the Windows brand." The show had been planned partially as an advertising experiment; rather than traditional commercials, plugs for Windows 7 were instead going to be woven into the comedy routines, an idea that apparently looked better on paper to Microsoft than onscreen.
That idea has been scrapped now that sponsorship has been assumed by Warner Bros., which will instead use traditional ads to tout the Christmas release of director Guy Ritchie's re-imagining of the Sherlock Holmes mythos.
This decision also means that jokes about Windows will return to their natural realm -- Apple ads, the internet and the American computer buying public at large.
-- Scott Harris
