Don't stop at junk food let's have no ads on TV

The Australian
Errol Simper
10 August 06


YOU'D probably be aware there's been quite some row between state health ministers and the federal Government over television advertisements for so-called junk food. Simply put, the states want to restrict or ban the exposure of young people to commercials for fat-inducing foods.

But the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, believe it should be up to parents what their children eat and what commercials they're free to watch. Howard and Abbott believe acceding to the states' desire to restrict or prevent commercials for fat-inducing foods would be akin to creating a so-called nanny state.

The scribe should venture without equivocation or apology that Howard and Abbott are wrong and the state health ministers are right. Commercials for foodstuffs and snacks that might make young people too fat shouldn't be shown on television at hours children are likely to be exposed to them. They're a health hazard. They undoubtedly encourage poor eating habits and thus, axiomatically, they're A Bad Thing. They shouldn't be merely restricted to certain hours. They should be banned altogether and the state health ministers are to be congratulated for an extremely sensible and responsible stand.

Unfortunately the relevant ministers haven't, at least in the scribe's view, gone anywhere near far enough. He harbours the strong belief that all advertising, whether for foodstuffs or for anything else, should be banned from television. Television should be a commercial-free medium. This stricture should apply equally to public and commercial television and should be brought in immediately or, if possible, retrospectively.

Advertisements for sugar-saturated foods with the potential to make you fat, expensive cars that will certainly put you into debt, houses it would take three lifetimes to pay off and household gadgets that break within 40 seconds of usage, all should go. There shouldn't be advertisements on television. Television should, henceforth, be given over to programming. Promoting goods or services on television should become An Offence.

Should this lead to the demise of commercial television as we know it (and the scribe would have to concede it might), well, what a tragedy that would be! However would we stagger on? No more Big Brother or The Bold And The Beautiful. No more Home Shopping or Oprah Winfrey. No more Yasmin's Getting Married, Insiders' Guide To Love, The Da Vinci Cup, Today Tonight, Mythbusters, Dancing On Ice or Pizza. What deprivation, what an extraordinary cultural loss.

In truth, this idea of getting ads off television may not be quite as revolutionary, novel or eccentric as some may believe. Indeed, those who've recently been babbling on about how one public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is a perfect example of how public broadcasting happily co-exists with advertising may have been interested in Radio National's The Media Report of July 27. The fact is an all-party Canadian senate committee, which spent three years investigating that country's media landscape, has just recommended CBC television ditch commercials. TMR's Gerald Tooth interviewed a Liberal senator on the committee, Jim Munson, a journalist for 32 years before turning to politics. Munson told him: "We feel the CBC, as a public broadcaster, should get back to the basics. And we've said: 'Get out of advertising.' The Government should have a 10-year program, a sustainable funding program, for the CBC to do what it's done best in the past: give Canadians Canadian content, Canadian news and so forth. We've ruffled a few feathers with our recommendations. But we feel it's very important."

Tooth: "Well, we're having the opposite debate here in Australia. You're recommending CBC, which has been carrying advertising on its television network for some time - for a very long time - actually stop using advertising as a revenue stream. Yet we're here in Australia talking about the possibility of the ABC carrying advertising. Why have you made the recommendation to move away from that commercial component and how would the CBC continue to be funded at the level it is if it doesn't have advertising?"

Munson: "We believe in public funding. In Canadian dollars the CBC receives $1 billion ($1.15 billion) a year from public funds, not very much when you think about that sort of thing. And CBC receives $C400 million ($470million) from advertising. We think the shortfall can be made up with the public. For example, listening to CBC radio in this country is a treasure. I come from private broadcasting and I understand private broadcasting and understand the advertising revenue stream. But what the CBC in this country gives us is a mature, independent, public voice, the only public voice in this country. If we allowed advertising on CBC radio, on which there is (presently) no advertising, I think it would be the death knell of our public broadcasting system. It (advertising) just takes something away from what CBC offers."

Speaking of advertising, the scribe had a deja vu moment during the Media Watch edition of July 31 as the presenter, Monica Attard, uttered the line: "In other words, they found a loophole." Attard was talking about the Countdown website, established by ABC Enterprises and which carries advertising. Attard quoted ABC New Media to the effect that while the website is an ABC "property" it's regarded as "outside the ABC Online scope" and thus not subject to the legislation that forbids the corporation accepting advertising.

This is exactly how the ABC set about accepting illegal television sponsorship during the "backdoor" sponsorship era of the early 1990s. It tried to establish a pseudo-independent company to accept the sponsorship, a company the ABC could - if pressed - disown. In other words, they found a loophole. Pleasingly, those responsible eventually came to grief.