The ITC has the power to direct licensees to discontinue a non-complying advertisement or sponsorship. It may also impose scheduling restrictions.
The ITC also has regulatory responsibilities in relation to television advertising sales matters, notably the requirement for 'fair and effective competition' and 'no unreasonable discrimination'. The ITC may issue directions to its licensees for these purposes.
The Advertising Advisory Committee (AAC) assists the ITC in setting standards for television advertising. This Committee, which meets quarterly, is currently chaired by Colin Seymour-Ure, Professor of Government at the University of Kent, and includes representatives of both consumer and advertising interests as well as individuals with other relevant expertise. The majority of the Committee is independent of advertising interests. The AAC keeps the Code of Advertising Standards and Practice under review, makes recommendations to the ITC about its content and application, and receives and discusses regular reports on the ITC's handling of complaints about advertising. It is also consulted by the ITC on sponsorship matters.
At the end of 1997 the Committee reviewed a report on the scheduling experiment on advertising for female sanitary protection products, started in 1995. This allowed advertising of a less demonstrative nature to air one hour in advance of the standard evening restriction of 9pm. As there had been little adverse reaction from viewers, the Committee recommended that the experiment continue.
The Committee also reviewed policy in the area of gambling. It endorsed a scheduling policy in relation to the National Lottery similar to that applied to alcohol and slimming advertising, which keeps such advertising away from programmes where large numbers of children may be watching. This was confirmed in April with a revision to ITC Guidance Note No. 7.
In response to a request for policy guidance from broadcasters, the Committee called for evidence on whether 'instant win' prize promotions were likely to encourage a culture of gambling among young people.
The Committee also reviewed the ITC's policy of requiring prices to be declared in advertisements for more expensive toys. They obtained legal opinion from a QC on the policy and reviewed the QC's opinion obtained by the British Toy and Hobby Association. The Committee made no recommendation for change.
The Committee discussed two literature reviews during 1997. A review of research into children's relationship with television was compiled by Professor Young, a child psychologist and provided useful background to issues such as emulation and fear, which are relevant to the day-to-day casework of the ITC. Guy Cumberbatch and Gary Wood had drawn up a review of research on Subliminal Persuasion and Perception without Awareness to assist in the understanding of the issue of subliminal advertising. No amendment to the ITC Codes was judged necessary.
Several Code changes were implemented during 1997, all of which had been previously examined by the AAC.
Rule 5 was amended to simplify the provisions for the maintenance of the clear distinctions between advertisements and programmes, and between advertisements and sponsorship credits.
Rule 40(k) was amended to simplify the requirements regarding the advertising of sales promotions entailing multiple purchases of alcoholic drinks.
Following a public consultation exercise the ITC made amendments to Rule 18 to permit the television advertising of bingo. This reflected a change in legislation.
A note was added to Rule 19 explaining that advertisements for lotteries, pools and bingo should not be scheduled in or around programmes of particular appeal to those under the relevant legal age for participation.
Rule 39 was revised to permit a wider range of introduction and dating services to advertise on television.
Rule 25 was amended to require advertisers to indicate the total price of goods that are to be paid by installments. A cross-reference to Rule 25 was inserted in Rule 36 dealing with mail order and direct response advertising.
Amongst other policy areas addressed during 1997, an ITC policy statement of 1994 was issued as ITC Advertising Guidance Note No.10 (Flashing Lights and Repetitive Patterns). This followed a small but still concerning increase in cases of a few viewers having epileptic seizures whilst watching television advertisements. The Guidance Note included a Technical Assessment Guide to assist advertisers in making sure their advertising complied.
In December the ITC clarified via a press release that Rule 25 should be interpreted so that the advertising of flight prices on television must now be inclusive of UK air passenger duty and other non-optional charges payable at the time of purchase. This reflected some public debate about the way flight pricing was being advertised. The application of the guidelines on car advertising was reviewed with the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) against a background of concern about an apparent trend towards portrayals of unacceptable driving and a public policy debate in the UK and Europe on standards of advertising in this area.
At the beginning of 1997 the ITC became an Associate Member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), a group of advertising self-regulatory bodies from across the whole of Europe. The ITC sees membership of this body as a positive contribution to its long-term support of self-regulation. The increased opportunities for exchange of information and research have already been mutually beneficial and the ITC looks forward to contributing to the development of the cross-border consumer complaint system co-ordinated by EASA.
In March 1997, the ITC published a revised Code of Programme Sponsorship. The new Code widened the opportunity for sponsorship of consumer advice programmes, provided greater scope for the use of straplines in credits and established that advertiser-supplied programmes would be treated in the same way as conventionally sponsored programmes. To the viewer, the new Code became apparent when many sponsors took advantage of the concession to allow certain advertiser straplines to be used in credits in vision only.
The ITC also decided to permit 'masthead programming' on all ITC licensed services other than Channels 3, 4 and 5. 'Masthead programming' is programming produced using the editorial and production resources of a magazine title.
The Commission had to balance the contribution magazine publishers could make to television against the strong promotional benefit that such titles would gain from this type of programming, particularly as this benefit far exceeds what would be permitted for any other type of advertiser-supplier. It also committed itself to reviewing this section of the Code after one year. Again, within a few months of the Code's publication, Granada Sky Broadcasting had scheduled The Good Housekeeping Show and The Zest Beauty Show and Carlton Food Network Ideal Home Cooks, followed later in the year by UK Style's Radio Times.
The range of broadcast sponsorships continued to widen in 1997. Texaco and Heineken sponsored ITV's high profile acquisitions of Formula 1 and rugby union respectively. Channel 4 made significant moves into sponsorship including Douwe Egberts (A Dance the Music of Time and Frasier) and Wella (Friends). Channel 5 began broadcasting with a number of sponsorships including Stella Artois (films), Scoot (weather) and Hooch (comedy). On cable and satellite, sponsorship continued to play an important part in programme funding, with BSkyB alone having some 54 programmes sponsored by 36 different sponsors.
Viewer reaction remains largely neutral to sponsorship. ITC research indicates that viewers do not believe that sponsors influence programme content (a key regulatory concern). A minority of viewers believe that there are too many programmes sponsored, or that sponsorship interferes with their enjoyment of programmes. The ITC continues to receive very few complaints about sponsorship each year.
The launch of the new Code provided an opportunity for the ITC to remind licensees' sponsorship, programme and compliance staff of the rules in this area. A large number of licensees accepted the ITC's invitation to receive presentations on the new Code, both at the ITC's offices and at their own locations. Ensuring a strong understanding of the rules by licensees remains a key objective of the ITC's sponsorship staff.
The Code for Text Services was revised to reflect the amendments to the Sponsorship Code. The Code now applies to all text services except those on cable.
The absolute volume of complaints remains small in relation to the scale of television activity, which is growing, as ever more channels become available to viewers. But, complaints received in 1997 continued the rising trend seen in 1996, increasing by 19 per cent over the previous year. The ITC dealt with 5,337 complaints in 1997, slightly lower than in 1996, although the 1996 figure included dealing with a high backlog of complaints carried over from 1995. The 5,337 complaints related to 1,519 advertisements. The relatively high level of complaints handled in relation to fewer advertisements can be explained by several cases which attracted an unusually high number of complaints where viewers claimed to have been offended by the content (see below). The fact that fewer advertisements gave cause for complaint in 1997 is reflected in the number of cases in relation to which complaints were upheld, which fell to 73, down 37 per cent from 1996 total.
The ITC welcomes this reduction in interventions, particularly with respect to complaints alleging misleadingness, where the number of cases upheld fell by nearly 40 per cent from 1996 levels. The level of advertising complaints dealt with is still running at almost 60 per cent higher than three years ago. To help cater for this new and more critical consumer culture, the ITC installed towards the end of 1997, a state-of-the-art complaints handling system, which will allow viewers' concerns to be addressed more speedily and efficiently in the future.
This reflects the ITC's commitment to maintaining high regulatory standards at a time of enormous change in the television landscape.
The 12 most complained of advertisements accounted for nearly 30 per cent of all complaints, up from the 1996 figure of 22 per cent.The commercial that attracted most complaints was for Lucozade Low-Calorie drink. It featured two stock comic-strip characters from the adult comic Viz,' Sandra and Tracey, the Fat Slags'. The ITC received 309 complaints about the use of the word 'slag', and about the negative stereotyping of overweight women. The complaints relating to bad language were upheld.
An advertisement for a partwork magazine about famous murderers, Murder in Mind, attracted 241 complaints, with viewers objecting that advertising for such a publication was offensive. Acknowledging that there were insufficient grounds to prohibit advertising for all publications that refer to murder, the ITC did not uphold the complaints, but gave guidance to broadcasters about the tone of such commercials.
Also drawing 241 complaints was an advertisement for the Citroen Saxo, set in a car factory where the car underwent a violent transformation from a standard to a sporty model by means of evil spirits. Viewers complained that such a frightening advertisement should not have been shown when children could be watching. The ITC upheld the complaints relating to scheduling, and restricted the advertisement to be shown after 7.30pm.
Three further advertisements, for the Volkswagen Polo, the Rover 600 and for Fosters Ice beer, attracted another 410 complaints also on grounds of offence, which meant that the top six most complained about advertisements accounted for 22 per cent of all complaints and contributed to the 20 per cent rise in offence-related complaints handled in 1997.
Complaints About Television Advertising (Full Year) 1997
Number of complaints Number of advertisements Number of advertisements referred to about which complaints were upheld
wholly or in part HARMFUL 590 (0) 212 (0) 5 (0) MISCELLANEOUS 518 (9) 192 (6) 17 (1) MISLEADING 1,253 (99) 703 (61) 41 (10) OFFENSIVE 2,976 (1) 412 (0) 10 (0)
TOTAL
5,337 (109)
1,519 (67)
73 (11)
The numbers in brackets indicate Teletext advertisements. They are extracted from, not additional to, the overall numbers.
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