Is the BBC Guilty of Over Advertising their Products?

Those Freeview ones do my nut in as well. Also, they seem to have made one crucial error when doing them - I've been watching closely on some of the recent ones with the TV with STB on top dancing around pretending to be a dog, but although they've got a SCART lead connected, there's nothing plugged into the aerial socket.

So, how one is ever going to be able to receive these "6 new digital channels" (or however many they say in the advert) without an aerial, I'm not too sure.

Speaking of BBC trails, does anyone know what the Asian type track was in the old BBC DAB advert (make time for radio?), and what the current tracks that are used in the current Radio 1 ones. I've been dying to know what they are for ages but have never got round to getting a clip.

But, yes, the amount of trails is getting rather insane. The ones for CBBC with "Where's Your Head At" in the background and current Bitesize ones make me want to hurl a large object in the direction of my TV!!

It is exam time at the moment, it's the time most schools do Mock GCSE's (trust me, i'm doing them) But yeh I think they need to make more variations though.

Yep - but does Prime get its commercial income from subscriptions or advertising? If it is mainly subscription based then they wouldn't need to have huge ad breaks to generate revenue.

Nope - the programmes are "versioned" for commercial outlets - the Beeb has a dept. to do this. They watch the shows and snip out the least important bits to reduce the running time - and insert ad break points.

In some cases producers of the shows themselves we provide versions with shorter running times (and cheaper music in some cases) rather than the versioning unit doing it.

There is an interesting DVD Extra on one of the Spooks DVDs explaining how they had to cut down a BBC One "hour" Spooks episode (58ish minutes?) to a US "MI5" "hour" (about 42 minutes) without killing the plot. Spooks doesn't seem to hang around much on the BBC - it must be amazingly frenetic in the US!

Well BBC Prime never has any ads on the channel(just the 1997 style trailers.), so it has to be subscription based. OT, but slightly related, I noticed neither BBC World Teletext or BBC Prime Teletext carry adverts at all.

Prime is a subscription based channel hence no commercials (except in South Africa where they opt away and insert commercials).

A typical Prime junction is: pointer, promo, promo, symbol, prog.

I guess the reason why Prime doesn't have huge complicated junctions is that it has nothing else to promote apart from itself, its website and cross promote BBC Food.

I know this whole thread is bashing the amount of promotional material in junctions, and yes, it can be pretty tedious at times, but I guess a couple of points to make are:

Firstly, junctions could be big if the preceding programme is shorter than planned/doesn't fill the slot. Better to fill then start the next programme early. Although, it has to be said, programmes are commissioned shorter than they used to be in order to make more promo time.

Secondly, the BBC is a very diverse organisation, and provides much more than just two TV channels. As everyone who has a TV license is entitled to access all of the BBC's services, then surely the organisation is obliged to tell its customers just what services they can receive, and how to get them.

Aggree there. From watching BBC trailers, you wouldn't have much idea at all what those stations play. You get the idea that 1Extra is "black" music which narrows it down- but still really isn't informative enough. the trailers make it look like "chav" central- which it probabally isn't the case. The name "6 Music" in all reality means nothing, just that it plays music- no information on the type of music it plays. If they promoted hosts and shows and gave information on what you hear on these shows, you'd get more idea.

The fact that every trailer for a programme that isn't on BBC1 or 2 is made into a trailer for Freeview is what annoys me.

On ITV you'd get something like 'The X Factor replay, Tonight at 8 on ITV2'

On BBC you get 'Little Britain, Tuesday at 9 on BBC Three. BBC Three is available on satellite, cable and now Freeview.... to get Freeview call blah blah blah....'

It's one of those terribly expensive and "clever" trails that manages to be so up it's own bum that it will entirely wash over the target audience without imparting any information whatsoever.