A bit late to the party, but the Daily Mail has taken up my long standing complaint (see previous posts here and here ) about Channel 4 and their blatant and persistent disregard for Ofcom’s Rules on the Amount and Distribution of Advertising

According to the paper “In documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, Channel 4 is revealed to have particularly targeted Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother for extra advertising. The number and length of adverts shown during these reality shows far exceeded the accepted maximum. Papers detailing correspondence between Channel 4 and Ofcom show that some of the station’s other big name programmes including Lost, T4 and Futurama, have breached the guidelines”.

For example:
2 April 2005: showed more than 12 minutes of adverts in a 9am slot during an episode of Futurama.
7 January 2005: showed more than 12 minutes of adverts in a 10pm slot for Celebrity Big Brother.

According to the paper Channel 4 also asked for special dispensation back in August 2004 from the 20-minute rule - which states “a period of at least 20 minutes should normally elapse between each successive internal break” - arguing the live nature of Big Brother meant it should be regarded more like a sporting fixture than an entertainment programme and thus beyond jurisdiction of the ruling.

Some people are asking why Ofcom have not acted against the Channel. Of course, they have. In November last year, in relation to Lost they found the Channel in breach of Rule 5.4 of the Rules on Amount and Distribution of Advertising (Period Between Breaks) for Lost finding that the Channel 4 failed to comply with the 20 minute rule on a significant number of occasions. At the time however Ofcom cleared Channel 4 of excessive advertising during the programme and stated that Channel 4 had not, in the course of this series, exceeded the maximum number of minutes of advertising permitted in any one hour, namely 12 minutes.

The issue here is of course that it was only investigating complaints about Lost. However, it seems, if the Mail’s report is true, that Ofcom has been ignoring a clear pattern of non-compliance with the rules by the station for well over a year.

If anyone has the FOI docs in question can they put them online.