Amid the wall-to-wall sound during Sunday's Super Bowl, one commercial from PepsiCo could send some viewers grabbing for their remotes to check whether they'd accidentally hit the mute button.

The pregame advertisement features a joke that originates from the deaf community and will play out on screen over 60 seconds of total silence, a veritable eternity when it comes to the noisiness of Super Bowl ads.

"It's a popular story and we just turned it into an advertisement," said Clay Broussard, a supply and logistics manager at PepsiCo who proposed the idea for the ad. "This is the PepsiCo flavor of that joke."

The joke goes like this: Two guys are driving to their friend Bob's house to watch the Super Bowl.

Once they get to Bob's street, neither knows which house is his. They sit in the car, arguing, until one of them has an idea. He starts laying on the horn, and one by one, the houses light up and dogs start barking.

One house stays dark and quiet: It's Bob's.

Deaf people will be falling out of their chairs in disbelief, National Association of the Deaf president Bobbie Beth Scoggins wrote in an e-mail response to questions. Hearing people, Scoggins wrote, will stop what they're doing to see why there are no sounds. She believes it's a historic first for an ad featuring American Sign Language to get such prominent play.

"I was glad to see this part of deaf culture awareness shared in a most clever way," Scoggins, who is deaf, wrote by e-mail as she was traveling.

Broussard, who plays Bob in the commercial, has worked for PepsiCo in Dallas for 27 years. He got involved in the deaf community through a church he and his wife attended, where the services were conducted entirely in sign language. Broussard is not deaf.

The two actors who play Bob's friends -- Brian Dowling and Darren Therriault-- are also PepsiCo employees and are deaf. Dowling works for Frito-Lay in Arizona, and Therriault works for PepsiCo in Chicago.

Broussard worked on the ad concept on his own time. He said, "This was all extra credit."

It was 18 months before he showed it to senior managers, who decided they wanted it for the Super Bowl.

The ad was directed by Baker Smith, with creative help from BBDO-NY and placement help from OMD, which both worked on the project pro bono. A PepsiCo spokeswoman declined to say how much the ad cost. (Vinnee Tong, Associated Press)

Steven Bochco, one of television's most successful producers but absent from prime time since the spring of 2006, will return this year with a new legal drama for TNT.

The cable channel said Thursday it has ordered 10 episodes of "Raising the Bar," a series about lawyers who went to school together but now find themselves working on opposite sides of the aisle. It will star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben, Jane Kaczmarek, Teddy Sears and Melissa Sagemiller.

Bochco, 64, who created the series with David Feige, previously produced "Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law" and "NYPD Blue." (The Los Angeles Times)

Following the search for a Maria for a British production of "The Sound of Music" and the search for a Danny and Sandy to star in a Broadway revival of "Grease," MTV said Thursday that it would create a TV series out of the search for someone to replace Laura Bell Bundy in the lead role of the Broadway musical "Legally Blonde."

Based on the hit film about a young woman who follows her boyfriend to Harvard Law School, the Broadway show has been running since April. A taped performance aired on MTV in October. (Lee Margulies, Los Angeles Times)

Local radio news stations will carry President Bush's State of the Union address tonight.

Jazz/NPR station WDUQ-FM (90.5) will carry NPR's live coverage, followed by the Democratic response and NPR news analysis, starting at 9 p.m. A shortened edition of "Jazz with Tony Mowod" will air from 7 to 9 p.m.

News/talk KDKA-AM (1020) and all-news KQV-AM (1410) will carry the address and response, starting at 9 p.m.

Following KDKA's broadcast, talk host Fred Honsberger will take listeners calls until midnight. (Adrian McCoy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)