Channel vision
Now that the recent surfeit of rugby is behind us, perhaps it is time to reflect on the surfeit of television advertising that accompanied it. And surfeit, overabundance, glut it most certainly was. If nothing else the coverage of the Rugby World Cup once again emphasised the urgent necessity for a strict rewriting of the codes of television advertising. These are sorely in need of overhaul lest Mammon overwhelm us all. If M-Net and the SABC continue to have their ways, television will soon resemble one of those lurid inserts you find in the daily newspapers, the ones for supermarket bargains and national computer discount shops and which are nothing but advertising.
It’s all gone more than a little amok. Under current legislation television advertising material may fill a maximum of 15% of total airtime. And right there is the rub, for the 15% is not measured hourly or daily, but over each year. When last I checked, neither the SABC nor M-Net were filling their allowed percentages, principally because during off-peak hours commercials are kept far below maximum. It’s in the prime viewing time that advertising goes way over the limit.
Of an hour, 15% represents nine minutes. Try to think of the last time you saw a peak-time hour in which there were only 9 minutes of advertising – a dozen or so commercials (notwithstanding the uninterrupted movies on M-Net where they make up the shortfalls with saturation advertising elsewhere). In one SABC3 peak- time hour last week the commercials added up to 15 minutes, or, at 25%, going on three times the limit.
The broadcasters also cheat. On-screen programme promotion is not categorised as advertising. So the stations will run a few ads, break for a couple of programme trailers and then run more ads. The logos that often adorn the corners of the screen are craftily termed “sponsor presence” and are not added into the total. Particularly in sports broadcasts everything is viewed through or against a dense matrix of brand logos. They are all over the studio sets, on the presenters’ and the players’ clothing, vast trademarks are painted on the fields, on the hoardings around them, on sports equipment – all of which is not counted towards the 15%
No one is willing to admit responsibility for controlling all this gruelling overkill. The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) blames the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA); the ASA say they don’t have the necessary muscle and that the IBA, who do have it, are looking the other way. The SABC deploy their traditional gambit which is to look profoundly stupid and plead ignorance.
When they’ve finished cheating, there’s the strident social irresponsibility. I would like to ask M-Net, the ASA and the IBA how they morally justify the obscene commercial gluttony of the Guinness campaign which attended the Rugby World Cup? In most matches, whenever a try was scored or a penalty was about to be kicked up came a series of large intrusive Guinness overlays.
The message was quite clear. Drinking alcohol is something Guinness want associated with sporting success at the very highest level. Apart from the manifest idiocy of the idea, how do the above gentlefolk justify disseminating this grotesque recommendation to children? Or does profit always supersede probity?
M-Net, who are known to excise diligently any use of the word “God” in the movies they air, lest this offend the religious, will however happily transmit messages which encourage the use of a dangerous and addictive drug. Neither M-Net nor the SABC would nowadays dream of advertising tobacco, but when it’s liquor to be hawked, all guidelines are abandoned along with principle. What is more, in the Guinness rugby commercials I didn’t see the mandatory warning about alcohol sales to children.
As for that pathetic clique, the ASA: they’ll ban anti-rape adverts on the grounds that they insult the sensitivities of South African menfolk. But when television commercials rape the susceptible minds of children, it is quite okay. What a bunch of hypocrites.
How pleasant to see Pat Pillai back on the SABC3 newsreading team. Like his ex- colleague, Anant Naidoo – who now reads for CNN – Pillai has genuine quiet authority, and above all makes sense of what he reads. I know it’s a dubious hope but his excellent example, daily so close at hand, might encourage his colleagues to correct some of their more basic mispronunciations — especially of the definite and indefinite articles. Be brave, girls and boys, give them a try.