They've done it at last....
there has been rumour about a potential ban of junk food advertising during children's television programs for some time, but at last it has happened, and I have to say this is wonderful news.
The ban doesn't apply to shows before a certain time or anything like that, but to shows that have a "particular appeal" to children under the age of 16 (ie more than 20% of the audience are likely to be under 16). This is better than had been expected, but not as good as health campaigners were wanting. It does mean that many of the teenage "soaps" and programs such as "X Factor" will be affected.
The TV channels and some advertisers are complaining - the first lose money and the 2nd lose a channel to reach their target market:
"Ofcom estimates that the restrictions will affect only 0.7% of the ad revenues of terrestrial broadcasters such as ITV, GMTV, Channel 4 and Channel Five.
Cable and satellite channels will see a loss of around 8.8% of total ad revenues.
However, the hardest hit will be dedicated children's channels, such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, which will see an estimated 15% hit in ad revenues."
Although this is said to be a small percentage for channels such as ITV, it does put further risk on the shows that are on ITV, putting more pressure on the BBC to produce quality children's TV rather than everyone just importing it from the US, where, from what I have seen, children seem to "grow up" a lot quicker than here in the UK.
As Channel 5 Chief Exec has said
"However, these restrictions will deny us substantial revenue and make the economics of producing children's programmes a lot more difficult in the future.
"The long-term future of UK-produced children's programming outside the BBC is bleak."
I'm all for a reduction in exposure that children have to "junk" food and the image that much of this has. It has to have some impact if eating a certain food isn't seen to be "trendy" because they don't see it on TV all of the time. Personally, I think that there should be a more global ban as it's the parents that actually buy the junk. I also think that there should be clearer labelling on food, but that's another story.
The main problem I can see is that the ban wont be complete until 2008,.... the restrictions are being phased in between now and then.
I still think "good on Disney" for saying that they will no longer endorse "junk" foods anywhere in the world, only healthy ones. Yes, they will still allow birthday cakes to be made, and a few other season specific things, but not general products such as biscuits, sweets, backing of McDonalds etc.
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To a certain extent I agree with you - parents need to set a positive role model for their children and actively parent. But, unfortunately there is a high proportion of parents who don't, and as a consequence these children suffer in many ways. If the government can help in a small way such as this, then I think it is positive as it is helping reduce the temptation children have to take the "inappropriate" route. After all, it's not their fault that for one reason or another parents do not take the active parenting role that would prevent this from being necessary. I think that this ban also helps big businesses realise that they have a role to play - it's not all about making as much money as possible, they have to be responsible about how they make their money.
I do think that the recent requests for the government to set TV viewing guidelines are really taking things too far. We have to be trusted to think at times and common sense says that we shouldn't be allowing our children to just sit in front of the television all day. In fact, many of the children's programmes are telling them to get up and do things, so just viewing should discourage continual viewing if parents respond correctly.
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