TELEVISION (LIMITATION OF ADVERTISING) (Hansard, 13 May 1959)

§ Mr. Christopher Mayhew
(Woolwich, East): I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Television Act, 1954, by prohibiting the broadcasting of advertisements for more than six minutes in any hour. Some hon. Members may feel, and I know that many viewers do, that the figure of six minutes in the proposed Bill is rather high. All the evidence, including that of Gallup polls, shows that while a small number of viewers like the advertisements a very much larger number are annoyed by them. There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of viewers feel that the amount of advertising today is wholly excessive.
Six minutes appears in the Bill because it is a step forward and because it is the figure which was mentioned by Government spokesmen during the proceedings on the Television Act as it passed through Parliament. On Second Reading, the then Home Secretary, now Lord Kilmuir, after explaining that this would be a decision for the I.T.A., said: …I ought not to prophesy…but the sort of thing I envisage—I may be wrong—is five or six minutes to an hour."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th March, 1954; Vol. 525, c. 1447.] The Assistant Postmaster-General at that time said: I have always envisaged that, so far as the spot advertisement is concerned, 10 per cent.—that is, six minutes an hour—would probably, or possibly, represent about what the Authority would regard as reasonable."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd June, 1954; Vol. 529, c. 245.] Those statements were intended to reassure Parliament on that point. That is why they were made and they helped the passage of the Bill which was, at times, very difficult. Parliament undoubtedly felt—and it is a most reasonable interpretation—that what was meant was "six minutes in any hour", and this is what is included in my proposed Bill, which is based on a workable and easily understood principle and would still leave the programme contractors capable of making a huge profit.
We are now being told that the Government spokesmen at that time did not mean any of this, but meant an "average" of six minutes. If that is what 1252 they meant, it is a pity that they did not make it clear at the time. It might have had a considerable effect on the passage of the Bill. But let us accept the idea of an "average" and look more closely at precisely what it means. It might mean that viewers, on the average, would see six minutes' advertising in the hour; that is to say, 1 million viewers could be shown seven minutes in an hour if they were also shown only five minutes' advertising in another hour. Viewers would then be seeing an average of six minutes, advertising in the hour. If that is what was meant by the spokesmen, it is still a pity, but at least it is not an unreasonable idea.
But what we are getting today is something totally different from that. The programme contractors know that though they can make a good profit on that basis they can make a very much greater profit if they concentrate their advertising at peak hours. Thus, a formula has been evolved which says that six minutes is to be the average for the whole day, that is to say, nine minutes is all right between nine and ten in the evening if it is balanced out by only three minutes between nine to ten in the morning. The two are compounded and make equivalent to "an average of six minutes in the hour." It means, in effect, that programme contractors may broadcast much more than six minutes when people are watching, provided that they broadcast much less when they are not.
This, the I.T.A. and the Postmaster-General tell us, is what the intention of Parliament was. That seems to me to be nonsense. That was not the intention of Parliament. In fact, it is a fraud and a very profitable fraud, as I shall now show. I have had the aid of the statistical department of the Library and I have made a careful analysis of London broadcasting for the latest convenient week, 27th April to 3rd May. The Television Press Agency, which provides clear and detailed logs of the commercials in the programmes, assures me that that week is in every respect typical. It shows that in normal viewing time, between seven and ten, the maximum was nine minutes' advertising in the hour, while the average over the whole normal viewing time was seven and a half minutes.
Over the whole period of the evening from five o'clock to eleven o'clock, if we include the advertising magazines, the 1253 average was 8¼ minutes. On three occasions There were hours in which there were more than 20 minutes of advertising. On Wednesday, 29th April, the peak was reached with 21¾ minutes of advertising between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening. Ironically enough, and I cannot resist saying this, after 21¾ minutes of high-powered publicity, at eleven o'clock there was a personal appearance by Lord Montgomery of Alamein.
How much do the programme contractors gain by this, in my opinion fraudulent, formula? It is quite easy to work out a rough estimate. Again, with the assistance of the statistical department of the Library, I have worked out that by systematically exceeding an average of six minutes an hour between seven o'clock and ten o'clock one programme contractor alone, Associated Rediffusion, is making a fraction under £2 million a year. If one takes the whole period from five o'clock to eleven o'clock, and includes the advertising magazines, it is making £4 million a year. It must be surely about the most public piece of systematic looting in the history of the country.
Associated Rediffusion is now asking for another channel. It might be well advised to clean up its own affairs if it is to keep the channel that it has already. All the programme contractors, Granada, A.T.V., and T.W.W., are making huge sums by keeping programme time short and advertising time long. It might almost be said that financial success in programme contracting lies in contracting the programmes.
How does I.T.A. excuse all this? The Authority is, after all, responsible. It cannot admit what everyone knows, that the reason behind this is that the programme contractors make huge profits by concentrating their advertising at peak periods. It has to find some other reason for explaining the figures I have given. Perhaps I may read to the House the explanation given by the Director-General to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) and myself. In an agreed minute of the meeting Sir Robert Fraser said: At the outset it seemed to the Authority that 10 per cent. of total time would be about right for advertisements, and the question then arose whether it should be spread evenly over 1254 the day, or related to the capacity of various types of programme to bear advertising. The Authority had decided on a policy of flexibility operated by reference to defined categories of programmes. It was very rare for advertising to exceed eight minutes in a clock hour. He asked Mr. Mayhew and Mr. Chapman whether it did not see sensible to let advertising time out over a day in this way. Mr. Mayhew asked whether Sir Robert was implying that the concentration of advertisements in the more profitable peak hours was simply a coincidence. Sir Robert Fraser agreed that, of course, the factors which determined so-called peak hours were often also factors which determined the capacity of particular programmes to bear advertising. Shortly afterwards I received a letter from the Director-General in which he said: I do not wish at this stage to tinker with the record of our meeting on January 29th, but I see that, on one point, I expressed myself in so compressed a way as to be obscure—The point I was trying to express was this. Popular light entertainment programmes—are bound to attract 'peak' audiences. Such programmes are also able to bear more than an average amount of advertising without harm. On the other hand, programmes of serious discussions will, by and large, both attract smaller audiences and also be less able to bear advertising without harm. The Postmaster-General has been more specific.

§ Mr. C. R. Hobson (Keighley)
Where is the right hon. Gentleman?

§ Mr. Mayhew
I notified the right hon. Gentleman that I was raising this matter. Defending the appearance of more than eight or nine minutes advertising in an hour, the Postmaster-General said, on 11th March, according to column 1239 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, that a lot depended on the nature of the programme, and so on.
But if it is true that it is the nature of a programme and not the time that it is shown that matters, surely the same type of programme should carry the same amount of advertising no matter when it was shown: but one has only to look at the log to see that this is totally untrue. There is nothing in it whatever. A light programme which appears at peak hours carries far more advertising than the same type of programme at off peak hours. Similarly, a serious programme at peak hours should carry less heavy a load than a light programme. In fact, however, serious programmes appearing at peak hours—they are very rare—carry just as much advertising as light programmes. 1255 I.T.A.'s defence is untrue and disingenuous. As usual, it is covering up for the programme contractors; and, as usual, the Postmaster-General is covering up for I.T.A.
My proposed Bill will put the whole matter straight. It is a twin Bill to the Television (Commercial Advertisements) Bill, which would abolish breaks in programmes and which was introduced a short time ago. That Bill has great support in the country. On the basis of a Gallup poll, we can calculate that it was supported by between 17 million and 18 million I.T.V. viewers. I believe that this Bill, if allowed to go forward, would be supported by at least as large a majority of the I.T.V. viewing public.
It will be opposed, however, by a very powerful vested interest. The programme contractors are not only powerful because of their wealth or their patronage, but because of their financial links with many newspapers in the country, and they also have friends opposite. The Bill may, of course, as the previous Bill did, pass unopposed at this stage and be obstructed at a later stage: but I think that my hon. Friends and I are agreed that the Bill is a just one, that it is widely supported and that if we cannot get it through this Parliament we will get it through the next one.