Rob Lowe has apparently joined former Verizon shill Paul Marcarelli in the realm of traitorous telecom company TV pitchmen.
Over the weekend, the former DirecTV commercial star tweeted, “@FOXTV and @DIRECTV have blocked out the #SEAvsATL game in my area. Stop the greed and let the fans see the game!! WTF?!!”
He followed that up with, “Hi, I’m Rob Lowe. And I’M “Screwed Over” Rob Lowe, with DirecTV that cuts off my abiliy to watch NFL games during the playoffs!”
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DirecTV is currently in a retrans battle with News-Press & Gazette involving 18 stations and numerous FOX affiliates. It’s unclear where Lowe was trying to watch the game.
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Starting in 2014, Lowe starred in a series of humorous DirecTV TV commercials, in which he’d play two versions of himself: One, a debonair, well-adjusted celebrity who likes good, reliable satellite TV service; the other, a more maladjusted version of himself with profound imaginary quirks.
There was “Peaked in High School Rob Lowe,” “Super Creepy Rob Lowe” and the facial-tattoo-covered “Poor Decision-Making Rob Lowe.” In the ads, those poor fellows always chose cable over satellite. “Don’t be like this me,” the better-off, DirecTV-subscribing Lowe would always advise.
Despite the fact that the ads coincided with a 60% spike in subscriber growth for DirecTV, the company pulled Lowe off the campaign in August 2015.
Lowe’s turning on the platform might remind some of Marcarelli, who stars in Sprint commercials as himself, advising wireless buyers that U.S. mobile networks are all largely the same.
For his part, Lowe seemed to walk back his comments a bit with a later tweet, noting, “Creepy, Hairy and Skinny Arms were upset with my tweet. Sorry. Got nothin but luv 4 u and @DIRECTV My neighborhood just wanted r football.”