Tobacco Sponsorship and Formula One

The most ridiculous use of blurring I've seen recently was a US version of Scrapheap Challenge where the US TV company's logo (TLC) was blurred out -- but only intermittently. One minute it would be fuzzed out on a car that was in the background, then the camera would switch to a closer view and the logo was there, taking up a third of the screen.

I did wonder if it was TLC or C4 who were responsible for this, and why they bothered. Surely they didn't start the job then decide they couldn't be bothered with it any more and leave it that way?

American Idol does this well, when it's shown on ITV2, they blur out the evident Coca-Cola logo that appears on the cups infront of the panelists.

I makes you wonder why they bother, all they're doing is drawing attention to the half-obscured Coca-Cola branding.

It reminds me of those old 1970s BBC shows where they covered the logo on the Heinz Baked Beans tins with black electrician's tape.

Or when someone appears on a TV show with a football shirt on, they always cover the sponsor and/or sports brand logo with some white tape

Exactally. If the logo wasn't blurred, then 99% of people wouldn't even notice it was there. Blur it, and suddenly it draws attention to the brand which is being blurred out (which is nearly always obvious).

The Montreal F1 race doensn't allow tobacco advertising at all. The federal government had to pony up millions of dollars to keep the race in Canada. I liked how Benson & Hedges got around it:
BENSON & HEDGES
BE ON EDGE

To get around rules like these in the past cigarette companies like "Benson & Hedges" changed there on car branding and clothes to "Buzzin Hornets" so it looks simular. I noticed recently at the British Grand Prix that the Ferrari team just removed "Marlboro" from everything and left a plain white patch, which tends to stand out so are advertising with actually showing there logo if you know what I mean?

Not always. The Sky Sports Fanzone and Team of the Week on Soccer AM have nothing covering the sponsors logos.

If i'm not mistaken Buzzin Hornets was the name of Eddie Jordans old music band. Just bares a similarity to Benson and Hedges.

ITV's problem is that it will be illegal for any British-based company to be involved in tobacco advertising (so, indeed, if ITV were to show a Ferrari in a country were tobacco advertising was still allowed, theoretically ITV might still be breaking the law). I think ITV were worried about this earlier on in the year, but I've not heard much about it recently. Now it's the F1 teams themselves who want clarification.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns15291.html