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I did a little bit of digging, and learned this about Cubed, Fox Sports’ embarrassment of a segment. The key take, via the Sporting News’ own blog …
The FOXSports.com web show Cubed made its debut in a raunchy 16-minute format yesterday. OK, raunchy is probably overstating it, but unfunny would be spot-on. Today, the link to the 16-minute version, which contained language and nudity, is dead. Today, in it’s place, is a 1:33 section of the show, which is still all together not funny. What happened? It was universally panned as awful and borderline offensive for such a mainstream entity.
Today, FOXSports.com made it even weirder with this PR spin by Brian Helfrich, Assistant Managing Editor
FoxSports.com’s Web series “Cubed” may have pushed the line too far with its debut episode. The Web site early Friday afternoon pulled the launch episode of “Cubed” and replaced it with a much more politically correct version. Female nudity that made up about 35 seconds of the 16-minute clip was at first pixilated and then later removed entirely. Also, some of the raunchier segments were deleted completely, including a discussion among the show’s three main characters about whether they would rather watch the WNBA or gay porn.
Fox replaced the original show with three separate segments that total a little more than 13 minutes. Reviews of the premiere, which launched Thursday afternoon, were almost unanimously negative. Fox Sports said in a statement, “The entire concept of ‘Lunch w/ Benefits’ was always described as experimental, as it is quite simply, a world first. In an experiment, things happen which are not always predicted. As one moves down the experimental pathway, it is normal to make changes and adjustments, hence the changes in the Cubed version now available.†The WNBA also was not able to comment by presstime.
“Experimental pathway?” Did anyone follow any of that? Here’s hoping that Cubed doesn’t make its way back to the web for a second week.
***
If I’m a power broker at Fox Sports, I remedy this situation by:
A. Making certain that Cubed never lives to see another day.
B. Making certain the person who green lighted Cubed enjoys his new position at the chocolate milk dispenser in the Fox cafeteria.
C. Giving the three boobs who star in the segment a break. Times are tough, and the young and hungry will do pretty much anything to make it. 
(I couldn’t find the names of two of the people, but the dude with the beard (featured in the absolutely butt-awful segment above) is Chris Pizzi. I think he used to be a production assistant. Hopefully he was good at his job.
