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Archive: Ofcom

Could more adverts be a good thing?

25 September 2007 23:17

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Entertainment, Formula 1, Politics, Sport, Technology, Television

Ofcom has said that it is thinking about letting television stations broadcast more adverts. Ofcom are considering allowing nine minutes of advertising per hour. Currently an average of seven minutes per hour is allowed, although a maximum of twelve minutes in any one clock hour is permitted.

Longrider is a libertarian but reacts with horror to the news. Meanwhile, Craig is worried about the impact on coverage of Formula 1.

I am no fan of television adverts, but I have to say that I feel sorry for broadcasters in this respect. The comments on the article from Times Online are mostly negative, perhaps encapsulated by this one by Harry Taylor.

Surely not! Is there not too much advertising already, mostly purile, repetitive and often misleading?…

With all its faults give me the BBC.

Of course, if Times Online were to write an article about a proposed increase in the License Fee, everybody would be saying the opposite. But, as they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Commercial broadcasters are expected to pull excellent programmes out of thin air with the minimum of advertisements. And as we’ve seen this year, another major form of revenue for broadcasters — premium-rate phone-lines — has become a bit of a taboo. People must accept that adverts are a necessary evil — but a balance must be struck.

But for all of their (supposedly) good intentions, a lot of Ofcom’s advertising regulations work against the viewer. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than Formula 1. F1 has the dubious honour of being the only sport event to be broadcast in the UK where adverts are showing during the action. And football fans complain about adverts during half time! Think about how F1 fans must feel!

Once again, it has to be accepted that adverts in F1 are a necessary evil. F1 is almost unique in that a Grand Prix can last anything from 90 minutes to two hours with no break in the action. (The only other sports I can think of that go on for so long with no breaks are long-distance running and cycling, which are usually not shown live by a commercial broadcaster.) Seemingly, this is just too long for ITV to go without showing an advert. This means that they can’t bunch them up at either side of the action as they do with football.

But does it have to be this way? Many F1 fans would be willing to see some form of compromise, but the solutions put forward are currently prohibited by Ofcom (PDF). The main culprit is pesky article 3.1:

Television advertising must be readily recognisable as such and kept quite separate from other parts of the programme service. Breaks containing advertising spots of any kind, including teleshopping spots, must be identified in vision and/or sound, for example station identifications going in and out of breaks.

This means that any way of ITV simultaneously showing both adverts and programming is prohibited. A split-screen solution is often proposed. One part of the screen contains the race action, perhaps as an inset in an advert. But it’s not allowed. Sky Sports News can do it because it is permitted as long as only text is displayed. But even a scrolling text service in this style would not be allowed on ITV, because the rules are stricter for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five.

Other reasonable compromises are also prohibited. For instance, ITV would not be allowed to broadcast audio advertisements while race pictures take up the screen. ITV could not even overlay text adverts on top of the race pictures.

All of this is not allowed by Ofcom, probably for noble reasons. But most F1 fans would love to have any one of these solutions over the current situation — where ITV interrupt the race completely and broadcast commercial breaks that last minutes.

Also working against F1 fans is the requirement that ITV must display an ident going in and out of commercial breaks. This prolongs the commerical break for yet more crucial seconds.

Indeed, if you are an F1 fan you might be tempted to suspect that Ofcom’s regulations were specifically designed to get in the way of F1 the most. Because, despite the constant references to how commercials should only appear at “natural breaks” of the programming, one paragraph — which was included specifically with ITV’s F1 coverage in mind — proves that this is all just for show.

In live coverage of long continuous events breaks may be taken at points where the focus of coverage shifts from one point to another of the event for example after a resume of the current placings in a race and before refocusing on a particular section of the race.

So even though there are no “natural breaks” in an F1 race, ITV may show adverts just by giving a run-down of the positions in the race before going to a break, and saying what lap the drivers are on when the adverts are finished.

I also reckon that the rules surrounding the amount and length of commercial breaks also works against F1 viewers. It also works against viewers of football, films, or any other long programme.

Now, my memory of what I am about to say is sketchy. It must have been almost a decade ago and I was still rather young. But I am sure that while I was on holiday in France I watched a commercial break that lasted several minutes. It felt like about fifteen, but it might have been ten minutes. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I would never have seen a commercial break last that long in the UK.

But these breaks were not included willy-nilly in the middle of programmes. The obscenely long commercial break was, in fact, placed out of harm’s way at the end of a football match (or a film, I can’t remember). It was there to make up for the lack of adverts during the programme.* So, while at first a commercial break lasting ten minutes may seem obscenely long, would not most of us prefer this kind of solution? One where the adverts were tucked away where we don’t have to see them?

As such, I would support a liberalisation — or at least a fundamental re-think — of advertising regulations. This is not only for the reasons I have outlined above, but for another reason which is the drive of my liberal view on most things.

Insiders at the regulator are keen to emphasise that they want to avoid coming close to US advert levels, which they believe would be unpalatable to British audiences.

If they were so unpalatable, broadcasters would of course not want to do this for fear of making viewers switch off. No regulations necessary — broadcasters will find the “correct” level of advertising naturally.

I suspect that a few years down the line we won’t have to worry about this at all. Due to the increasing prevalence of PVRs, soon enough we will all be able to record the programmes then fast-forward through the adverts. (I usually already do this when I watch Grands Prix because I am not in a position to watch the races live.)

Advertisers will have to find more and more creative ways to reach viewers. Product placement might be harder to regulate. And soon enough we probably won’t always even realise when we are watching adverts.

* I might actually be completely wrong about this, and the long commercial break may have been caused by some kind of technical mishap or something else. I did not know because I could not speak French, but the scenario I described seems most likely to me.

6 comments

Why Emily made me hate indie music again

7 June 2007 18:20

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, General, Music, Personal, Politics, Television

So the attractive-but-punchable one from Big Brother, Emily, has been booted out and will now be known as the attractive-but-racist one. I can’t help thinking that Channel 4 have overreacted a bit. But I suppose that’s the sort of thing that happens when Ofcom are in charge.

Even though she was easily the best eye-candy in the house, she was intensely annoying right from the very start. Her introduction video was almost painful to watch.

AAAAAAAAAARRHRHHGHRUYAGSSKJSUgd}) p(oluj[omrgklsdv ,.xco=-

There are so many bad bits in this video, but the absolute worst is this:

There's a new music that's taking over this country and it's called indie.

That one sentence alone was enough to send me bouncing round the room with rage when I saw it. It was almost enough to have me lapsing back into the state I was in when I was 15, when I was turned off by indie music and everything it stood for. It took me years to even accept it when an indie band did make good music.

I might have to brace myself, because whenever I criticise any music on this blog, some poor soul feels like he's been violated and launches into personal attacks in the comments. But I will do this anyway.

Here is my list of things I hate(d) about indie music and why Emily personifies its problems:

  1. This generation does not have its own sound. Emily says "There's a new music", but if there is then indie is not it. It might not have been called indie since the start, but the approach and the style of music have been around since at least the late 1970s. Not much has changed since then. A lot of youths think that this is their sound, but it is the same sound that their dads were listening to. Shame on our generation for being the first since at least the 1950s not to have its own scene!
  2. Indie is not as gritty as its listeners would like to think. Many indie fans see the music as raw, gritty, rebellius and working-class. But over the past five or ten years, indie music has become as bland and commercialised as the pop and R&B that its fans deride. But many indie bands are made up of middle-class people pretending to be working class. The Kooks are the worst example. Kaiser Chiefs might predict a riot, but it is the politest, most middle-class riot you will ever see.

    Of course, there is nothing wrong with rich people forming a band. But Emily is deluded. She acts embarrassed about her wealth while simultaneously flaunting it. "I'm not a rich bitch," she says, before describing how she owns hundreds of handbags and shoes. Davina McCall then reveals that Emily's teeth cost £4,000.

  3. Indie is not as radical as its listeners would like to think. At least Emily does not suffer from this, as she is open about the fact that she considers herself to be right-wing, and intends to vote Conservative in the next election. While this information on its own shouldn't make her a villain, there is something wrong with a 19-year-old complaining about "the youth of today" for not embracing education. And now we have the racism issue to top it off.
  4. Indie music thinks it's superior to your music. This is an all-too-common thing to hear from an indie fan: "the music I listen to is smarter and more intelligent than [dance / hip-hop (delete as appropriate)]. Clever people like me listen to it. Stupid people like you listen to [dance / hip-hop].” Emily clearly thinks she is at the top of the tree. At one point she asks, rhetorically, “Isn’t it time you put some intelligent women on the show?” Davina McCall also reveals that Emily gives herself 10 out of 10 for intelligence. Not that we saw much evidence of this intelligence while she was in the house.
  5. Indie heros are wankers. Emily hoped that the house would contain “dirty kind of Pete Docherty kind of rocker boys.” Need I say more?

18 comments

More iPlayer insanity

31 January 2007 19:41

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Music, Radio, Technology, Television

Good news — the BBC Trust has thrown its weight behind iPlayer. But every silver lining has a cloud, as Ryan Morrison points out.

The iPlayer that has been given the go-ahead will have a few changes to what has been proposed before. The changes are quite minor really. Infact, one of them — about taking a platform-independent approach — is very good indeed. But there is still the odd moment where I have to slap my palm on my forehead and ask, “WHY?”

Genres included in non-DRM audio downloads: Audio-books and classical music should be excluded from the non-DRM downloads.

In other words, audio books and classical music — two very worthy genres that ring the right public service bells — will be locked up and more difficult to access than other genres. So if the next generation grows up with absolutely no taste in books or classical music, you’ll know what’s to blame.

The public value to be created is not, in the Trust’s view, sufficient to justify the potential market impact of allowing downloads of these genres.

This is horseshit. This is about the greedy commercial music industry maximising its profits; not about maximising public value. When the BBC offered all of Beethoven’s symphonies for free download, it was a massive success and everybody loved it — apart from those greedy bastards who want to lock music away unless you pay their high prices. Because the music industry reacted so violently against it, the BBC has promised never to do anything similar again — despite the fact that it was a huge success. The same is now happening to iPlayer.

1 comment

The greatest argument in favour of the license fee

24 January 2007 20:32

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Politics, Radio, Technology, Television

Yesterday Ofcom criticised the BBC’s hugely promising project to get its content online and accessible on demand for free. According to Ofcom, project like BBC iPlayer “would not be in the long-term public interest”. Not too long ago a similar attack was made against the BBC’s use of podcasts.

This is the BBC using modern technology to make content more available to everybody. These are programmes that have already been paid for, being made available to more people in a much more convenient format. You would be able to watch or listen to programmes whenever it suits you. Unquestionably, license fee payers would be getting more value for money.

But apparently, the BBC doing great things like this hurts the commercial sector. I think not! Does the BBC’s iPlayer prevent ITV from creating their own similar service? Hardly. In fact, Channel 4 are already out of the blocks with their 4oD service.

The fact that more commercial broadcasters haven’t taken the same step, though, is rather telling. The problem with commercial broadcasters is that they all just roll around moaning about the license fee instead of actually thinking about what the audience wants. As the boss of (commerical) Radio Pembrokeshire said last year,

…If only other small commercial stations would stop whining about the [BBC] and offer engaging content, like us, then the commercial sector would be in less of a sorry state.

The commercial broadcasters churn out their samey middle-of-the-road rubbish and refuse to take advantage of the new technology that threatens the very existence of television as we know it. The BBC, meanwhile, is taking all of the innovative steps that are dragging the mainstream media into the 21st century.

If the commercial sector is in trouble, they ought to take a good look at themselves rather than just pointing at the BBC. As things stand, the greatest argument in favour of the license fee is not the quality of the BBC. It is the shoddy state of commercial broadcasters, with their utter disregard for viewers.

Meanwhile, Ofcom should be embarrassed. To criticise the BBC’s ambitions to drag television into the modern world and benefit viewers as a whole makes them just look completely out of touch, particularly as they claim that such a scheme would not be in the public interest!

All the while, Ofcom turn a blind eye to — if not positively encourage — phone-in quiz shows that pollute commercial television stations. These are genuine dangers to the public interest. They don’t serve the viewers one iota (apart from the relatively decent Quizmania, which has been axed), and they downright swindle the poor people who phone in.

See also Ryan Morrison’s post. Meanwhile, Mike Power puts it more succinctly.

6 comments

What else were Channel 4 supposed to do?

18 January 2007 20:42

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Politics, Technology, Television

What I find most strange about this whole Celebrity Big Brother hoo-ha is the idea that Channel 4 should apologise and the fact that the Carphone Warehouse have felt the need to withdraw their sponsorship of Big Brother.

So Carphone Warehouse finds the racism broadcast by Channel 4 deplorable. Presumably Carphone Warehouse want to dissociate themselves from the racist comments made by Big Brother contestants.

But Carphone Warehouse has been sponsoring Big Brother in some form or another for years. So are we to assume from this that Carphone Warehouse condoned the several instances of bad behaviour that have happened in the Big Brother house since they began sponsoring the programme?

Did anybody, for instance, say that because Carphone Warehouse sponsored Big Brother then they must have supported Sandy taking a massive slash in the kitchen bin? Of course not. If you sponsor a reality programme, you ought to expect reality — good and bad — to be associated with your brand. But nobody will expect you to like everything that makes up reality. None of us do; why should Carphone Warehouse be made to feel any different?

Clearly, the entire row has been blown out of proportion. This whole thing does stink a little bit like a coordinated campaign. People are amazed that Ofcom has received so many complaints about Big Brother now, but that is just the nature of campaigning today. The internet spreads the word and empowers people to do this sort of thing very easily.

Just like the complaints about Jerry Springer: The Opera, the numbers will be misleading because of the nature of the campaign. In future, complaints on all matters will be measured in tens of thousands — not dozens like they were just a few years ago.

As Chris Dillow says, criticising Channel 4 is just shooting the messenger. Besides, surely Channel 4 should be applauded for bringing the issue to the fore.

It is a cliche to say that Big Brother isn’t a “reality” television programme. But it is really. What we are seeing here is what Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara et al really think. Of course, were they not shielded from “the outside world”, the protagonists would have stopped bullying Shilpa Shetty as soon as the issue of race came up. But because they are not aware of the public reaction we continue to see their true colours; we are seeing the real reality.

I have always liked Big Brother compared to other reality television shows because it focuses on these kinds of issues that affect us all. Other reality shows focus instead on, for instance, which celebrity can eat the grossest animal gonads. Big Brother is smarter than that.

So imagine now if Channel 4 had decided to censor Big Brother by deleting all of the comments made by Jade et al against Shilpa Shetty — which I presume is what those who are complaining would rather have happened. That would have completely gone against the entire point of the programme. Channel 4′s job is to show us what is going on inside the house and to ask us what we think of it (by the mechanism of the regular public vote for eviction). What else are they supposed to do?

As things stand at the moment, you can probably expect Jade to be evicted unequivocally and she will face a fierce and worldwide public reaction. She will have paid her price for her racist comments and for losing the game of Big Brother (ironic, given the fact that Jade — having been on Big Brother before — was said to have an upper hand over the celebrities in terms of winning the game). Everybody looking on will have a pretty good idea that racism causes a great deal of offense.

Had Channel 4 censored the comments, nobody would know anything about it and Jade et al would have got off with their bullying. Then there would have been a real reason to criticise Channel 4 — for covering up the misdemeanors of the racist housemates and allow them to get away with it without having to face the reality of the offense their comments make.

Put simply, it is not Channel 4′s fault of some of the people in the Big Brother house turned out to have racist views — although it’s clearly not as simple as racism, as Robert Sharp excellently points out in a good post looking at class and other issues surrounding the row as well, as does Cassilis.

As for those people who claim that people like Jade Goody and Jo O’Meara are role models for young people — bollocks! If anybody has Jade Goody as a role model — which I highly doubt! — then they are already a lost cause.

I saw Big Brother’s Little Brother the other day. On it was Paul Morley, who rather optimistically saw this as a potential turning point. He said perhaps this was the turning point where people realise that celebrating non-entities is pointless because there’s nothing to celebrate about them.

I also saw a few people comment on the fact that it was the foreign housemates — Shilpa, Jermaine and Dirk — who were smarter than most of the British housemates. I think this says something about celebrity culture in the UK. I’m not a snob about this, but the Celebrity Big Brother gig probably only appeals to a certain kind of celebrity.

An funny comedian, for instance, would not be seen on CBB today — although you did when Big Brother was still new. That’s because Big Brother is now associated with the Jade Goodys of this world. Shilpa, Jermaine and Dirk probably didn’t realise this. Shilpa said in the house, “This is what the modern UK has come to?”

Fortunately, Shilpa is incorrect in this instance — because she has only been living with the real dregs that British celebrity has to offer. It is a pity that it is this shameful side of British culture that the world is seeing. Come the eviction, everybody will be reminded of the downright mediocrity — and unpopularity — of Jade Goody.

Update 23/01: I can’t believe it took me this long to realise the mistake I made in the title…

6 comments

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