BBC World: Advertising

Hi peeps,

Could someone explain to me please, where ever I watch BBC World, why I never seem to notice advertising of any kind? I presume that it is actually funded by advertising revenues?

Regards,

Dan

It is ad-funded - I assume you are watching it on the web. It takes the 'clean' feed without any adverts. Local providers opt-out when those text-based update screens appear and show commercials.

BBC World has less ads than CNN. Most ads are shown in Europe during the day. Before the relaunch, there were entire days with no ads at all.

Ah, this must be it!

Thank you!

Dan

You can say that again!

I often meant to get a stopwatch out on programmes like Larry King Live and actually find out what the ratio is - probably something close to 2:1 programme to ads/filler.

I wonder how the ITC views this - though as most of the breaks are just trailers instead of commercials (as would no doubt be the case on CNNUS), I suppose that circumvents the problem.

Don't think ITC regs apply to things which are broadcast outside of the UK

The ads are always the sames one updated every few weeks!

Well no, but I think Andrew was wondering if, they did broadcast in the UK.

The Europe stream of BBC World carries lots of ads. They had to re-design the Presentation suite to cope with them all.

Personally, I think BBC World should be funded by the Foreign Office in the same way as the World Service. OK, so some may feel that BBC World would just be puppets to the government, but we know that not to be the case for the World Service.

CNN International is sourced from the UK and therefore is most definitely subject to regulation by the ITC. Recently their programmes based on Time and Fortune magazines had to be withdrawn as current affairs programmes are not allowed to be sponsored according to ITC rules.

Also, some programming on MSNBC which was only shown in Germany but was uplinked from the UK fell foul of the ITC regulations.

For full details, see the ITC website and specifically their reports on their decisions - head down the page and look for 'CNN and Time' and 'NBC Giga'.

I don't think this has been said before but, the ITC only allows 7 mins of adverts per hour, no matter what channel.
Therefore, when American programmes which are not subject to our regulations broadcast over here, take CNBC as an example, the channel broadcasting them over here has to replace any adverts over 7 mins with trailers.
That is why you will see advert breaks at the top of the hour and then later in the hour you will only see trailers, as the 7 min advert barrier has been reached and no more adverts can be put on.

Another ITC funny is that you cannot directly follow any religious story/programme with adverts.

Read all about it (if you can't sleep!) at http://www.itc.org.uk