WITH RESPECT, I suggest that the leader writer in the
Manchester Guardian is wrong. Advertising in programmes, whether it is presented honestly as such or not, is forbidden by the Act. True, the Act allows advertising where it has an 'intrinsic interest or instructiveness'; a phrase which puzzled me when I read it, so that I sounded the ITA on how they proposed to interpret it. The answer— this was two years ago—was that they would permit two exceptions to the no-advertising-in- programmes rule. The first would apply (this was the actual example they gave) if, say, a petrol company made an exciting film of Le Mans; the fact that the film was thus 'sponsored' would not be a fatal bar to its being shown. The second was that if in a programme for housewives different types of, say, material were discussed, an element of advertising might enter in, but this would not matter provided it was not paid for. It is this rule that has now been relaxed, with the result that
advertisers can buy space on actual programmes. ThiS is clearly contrary to the intentions of the Act. As, however, the ITA can interpret the clause any way they like, the air can be filled with advertising programmes on the excuse that they are 'of intrinsic interest.' Goodness knows, they are more interesting than most of the programmes:
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