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The UK culture secretary has now announced, after a consultation exercise, how the Government intends to proceed on key broadcasting policies set out in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. The most controversial policy is in relation to product placement, currently banned in any UK-made programmes. Broadcasters argued that allowing product placement would provide a new source of revenue, but consumer and viewer groups claimed that it would blur the distinction between advertising and editorial content and undermine the trust that viewers have in the integrity of UK-made programming. The...

It will be recalled that the producers of the hit film “The Chorus” ( “Les choristes” ) brought a case against half a dozen major advertisers (Voyages-sncf.com, AOL France, Neuf Cegetel, Telecom Italia, etc) who were advertising on peer-to-peer sites alongside links giving access to the unlawful downloading of the film (see IRIS 2006-8: 14). The film’s producers had brought them to court, rather than the actual peer-to-peer sites, the advertising agencies or the Internet access providers (IAPs), on the grounds that the advertisers were promoting the unlawful availability of a cinematographic work...

A number of Czech television channels have recently broadcast several unusual commercial inserts. Immediately before the commercial separator was shown, the logo of a sponsor appeared, identified as the sponsor of the commercial separator. The Broadcasting Council considered this to be a breach of the provisions of the Broadcasting Act on the separation of advertising and programme material. Advertising must be clearly identifiable and separated from other programme elements by optical means on television and acoustic means on radio. Sponsorship, on the other hand, is the contribution of a natural...

The Supreme Court of Cyprus decided that the broadcasting of an advertisement by a parapsychologist claiming that she could solve a number of problems, such as stress at work, alcoholism, domestic violence, love relations and others, breaches the law. The Court was concerned with an appeal of SIGMA TV against a decision of the Radio Television Authority (RTA) to impose a fine of CYP 2,000 (EUR 3,400) on the channel for transmitting the advertisement in question. In December 2004 an anonymous viewer complained to the RTA that SIGMA TV advertised the services of a ‘psychologist by intuition’ claiming...

The company Métropole Télévision operates the French television channel M6. Although this is aimed at the French public, it is possible to receive its signal, broadcast by satellite and terrestrially, in Switzerland as a result of natural overspill. Since January 2002, Métropole Télévision has been broadcasting a second signal, separate from the one used for broadcasting in France. This second signal, distributed in Switzerland by a number of cable distributors, uses all the programming broadcast by M6 in France, but incorporates advertising messages directed specifically at viewers in the French-speaking...