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Campaign opposes U-turn on product placement
Jonathan Hardy national secretary CPBF
DATELINE: 16/9/09
According to reports Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw will announce today a Government U-turn on product placement and allow brands to pay for presence in TV drama, entertainment and sports progammes. The CPBF opposes product placement and urges all our supporters to register their opposition when the three-month consultation begins.Ben Bradshaw is wrong for all the reasons his predecessor Andy Burnham was right when he rejected the case for brands to pay to appear in programmes. Product placement would allow programme agendas to be distorted for commercial purposes and give advertisers unhealthy control over decisions about what content is shown and commissioned.
There has been a carefully orchestrated effort made to reassure the public and paint the ban on paid placement as unnecessary, even patronising. But allowing product placement will not give consumers more power, it will give them less. The rules which commercial broadcasters and advertisers want to remove, make it illegal for them to make financial deals to feature brands, while the rule on undue prominence prevents brand endorsements, allowing all of us to see when the rules are breached. Don't worry, we are told, there will be safeguards and 'editorial independence' won't be sacrificed. But we believe that this would undermine the existing, effective measures to stop advertisers influencing content. Product placement would allow programme agendas being distorted for commercial purposes. If product placement is allowed the power to decide lies with advertisers, programme-makers and broadcasters – the public is left with the power to switch over or switch off. We call that patronising - as well as deeply troubling.
We are told product placement will allow greater 'realism' but this misleads the public. What advertisers want, and will pay for, is marketing within programmes. The sheer volume of product placement on US television today shows where this ends up. The Writers Guild of America offers eloquent testimony to the inauthenticity, commercial plugging, and distortions of 'realism' that occurs when marketers are allowed to control what writers and programme-makers produce.
The biggest lie is that this does not matter – that there are no real costs to viewers to offset the shaky economic case that stealth advertising can help save programme budgets. If factual programmes can't be trusted because opinions may be bought by brands, it matters. If there is intrusive, inauthentic 'brand integration', or only 'promotionally friendly' programmes get made, it matters. If marketers can by-pass rules on advertising, so that junk foods are promoted to children in programmes like the X-factor, it matters.
Andy Burnham was right to reject product placement because it will undermine trust in programmes and undermine, irretrievably, the separation between programmes and advertising that has underpinned the quality of British broadcasting. A majority of the public oppose intrusive advertising but their voices will not be heard if advertisers get the influence they want and commercial broadcasters get the ad-finance they seek. The time to be heard is now in calling on the government not abandon the separation of programmes and advertising by allowing product placement. We will campaign to oppose the introduction of embedded advertising and urge all our supporters to join us.
Last modified: Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
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A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
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Previous stories
Government Policy
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