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The UK has had since 1956 a list of events that are felt to have special national resonance and so are available, so far as is possible, to be broadcast on free-to-air television. The list, which is drawn up by the Secretary of State, has been regularly amended and has now been examined by an Independent Review Panel. The Panel found that 82% of respondents believed that they had an entitlement to watch certain events free-to-air, as they had already paid their BBC licence fee, and that there is compelling evidence of a public expectation that the BBC should give a high priority to such events....

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport is consulting on a change to advertising rules to permit product placement on television; it has stated that it “is currently minded to permit product placement on UK television, subject to safeguards”. It is however concerned about potential health issues related to the promotion of particular types of product. The current position is that product placement is prohibited by the requirements in the Ofcom Broadcasting Code that “no undue prominence may be given in any programme to a product or service” (rule 10.4) and that “product placement is prohibited”...

On 19 December 2009, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2009 came into force. This was actually the date by which EU Member States must transpose into national law the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS Directive). The Regulations are made under the European Communities Act, 1972, Section 2(2). The Regulations deal with those matters in the Directive whose transposition requires legislation, with the exception of “product placement”. There are four main topics in the Regulations: 1) The regulation of video-on-demand services. This involves a new legal definition of “on-demand programme...

The BBC received complaints about commercial sponsorship of the Sports Personality of the Year awards in December 2007; these were upheld by the BBC Trust, as there had been breaches of editorial and fair trading guidelines (see IRIS 2008-8: 14). The BBC has now issued new guidelines on sponsorship of BBC events. The most important policy is that the BBC will no longer accept sponsorship by commercial bodies for on-air BBC events. This covers commercial companies and other commercial bodies (including public/private partnerships) which compete directly in a commercial market. Existing contracts...

The serious problems in UK broadcasting relating to phone-in competitions and votes have been illustrated once more (for earlier examples see IRIS 2007-8: 11, IRIS 2007-10: 15, IRIS 2008-2: 13, IRIS 2008-7: 13, IRIS 2008-9: 11). In the most recent case, Channel TV was fined by the Office of Communications (Ofcom) for two breaches of its codes in relation to ‘The British Comedy Awards 2004’ and the ‘British Comedy Awards 2005’. The programmes were networked nationally; Channel TV had been appointed as the compliance licensee, although the programmes were made by an independent production company. The...