Jan. 31--Miller High Life is doing an end run around Bud Light on Sunday with Fort Worth native Windell Middlebrooks starring in what could be America's shortest TV commercial ever televised.

Blocked by Budweiser's exclusive deal with Super Bowl XLIII, MillerCoors is buying up airtime in one-second increments on local NBC affiliates carrying the game, said Julian Green, a MillerCoors spokesman.

It follows through on a spot last year of Middlebrooks critiquing Super Bowl ads in his increasingly famous role as a Miller delivery guy with little patience for phonies and snobs.

Green won't say exactly how much MillerCoors is paying to round up roughly 70 percent of the viewing audience market by market, allowing only that it's far less than the $3 million Bud is paying for each of its nine 30-second spots.

That works out to $100,000 a second for Budweiser, now owned by the Brazilian-Belgian giant, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Significantly, Miller High Life is garnering barrels of free publicity from the one-second campaign conceived by the brewer and its ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi.

The story of the second-long ad caught the attention of Advertising Age magazine, USA Today and other publications.

And it landed a masterfully conducted appearance by Middlebrooks on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, which gave a sneak preview of the commercial, in which the Trimble Tech grad declares: "High Life!"

It's not easy shooting a 1/60th of a minute spot, evidently.

In a telephone interview from Los Angeles, Middlebrooks said the shoot in bitterly cold New York early this month lasted 17 hours -- without a break for a beer. "We celebrated when it was all over."

Middlebrooks said he initially reacted with disbelief when told of the one-second ad approach.

"How in the world were we going to do that? Uh-oh, I'm going to have to make some magic happen," Middlebrooks said he told himself. "But once I realized the concept, I loved it."

The catch line was not selected until all the taping was over. His own favorite showed him sitting before some musicians just grunting along with the tune. Miller has a Web site with downloads of outtakes from the shoot, www.1secondad.com, and is running a 30-second teaser ad with Middlebrooks this week.

The 30-year-old Middlebrooks, who credits Tech's drama teacher Cheryl Penland with inspiring him to pursue a career in acting ("I speak with her every week"), is convinced that the Miller delivery role will not stereotype him.

Even before the commercial, Middlebrooks said, he a was character actor usually cast as a "blue-collar, hardworking everyman."

"It was not just my physicality but, people said, my essence," he said. That quality won him appearances in My Name Is Earl, the Bernie Mac Show and a continuing role on the Disney Channel's Suite Life on Deck. He also appeared in a Dr Pepper ad as a dancing football player.

Importantly, the Miller work allows him to pursue acting full time. He gladly said goodbye to a day job in public relations and a side gig as a video DJ at an L.A. sports bar called Yankee Doodles. "This is all very positive."

Attempts were made to air a second-long spot during last year's Super Bowl.

The Eels rock band tried to run a 1-second commercial during halftime, but the National Football League insisted that it find 29 other advertisers to fill the standard half-minute slot, band member Mark "E" Everett told the music Web site NME.com.

But then the NFL "noted that a rapid-fire, 30-second segment of 30 one-second commercials could cause people with certain medical conditions to have seizures and that it was against network regulations," Everett was quoted as saying.

-----

To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.star-telegram.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

BUD, TAP, SAB.L, GE, VIV, GCI,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.