The ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is there to keep tracks on the content of advertisements and direct marketing in the U.K. It’s the role of the ASA to stop any misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements. They do this by enforcing the Advertising Standards Codes. The codes are divided into two parts one set of codes called The CAP Broadcast, which is for T.V and Radio and other types of adverts. The other set of codes called CAP Non-Broadcast, which is for Teletext, Interactive adverts and television scheduling for adverts.




The ASA are there to protect consumers from inappropriate material that may cause them to be misled, cause them harm or offence. The ASA has the role of ensuring all advertisements are honest and decent.
The ASA deals with most types of advertisements but not all of them. Below is a list of some of the types the ASA deal with and some they don’t.

TYPES OF ADVERTS ASA DEALS WITH:
• Magazine and Newspaper Adverts
• Radio and TV commercials (Not programmes or programme sponsorships.)
• Leaflets and Brochures
• Cinema commercials

TYPES OF ADVERTISMENTS THE ASA DOESN’T DEAL WITH:
• Claims on websites
• TV and Radio Sponsorships
• Shop Window Displays
• Political Advertising.

To find out more details about the types of advertising the ASA deal with visit:
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/Guided+Tours/Consumers/What+types+of+ads+and+promotions+does+the+ASA+look+into.htm

Anyone can make a complaint if they feel an advertisement’s content in inappropriate or does not apply with the Advertising Standards Codes. The ASA will then investigate the complaint and make a decision on whether the advertisement is breaking the codes. The ASA can they make a series of decisions, which can include: banning the advert all together, or possibly re-scheduling the advert other decisions can be made.

One advert that the ASA received many complaints about was the ‘Marmite Blob’ T.V advert. The advert featured a massive blob of marmite. After an investigation from the ASA the advert was banned.

Click on this link to watch the 'Marmite Blob' advert: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MlsBem2JOl0

“ All the viewers said that their children had been terrified by the advertisements.”
– ASA (2005)

To find out more about this complaint visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4353055.stm

The most recent advert that ‘Marmite’ has broadcast is more suitable for children, using old children T.V characters such as ‘Zippy’ from Rainbow and ‘Paddington Bear’. Although the style of advert has changed, ‘Marmite’ still uses the same slogan

‘YOU EITHER LOVE IT, OR YOU HATE IT’

To watch one of the latest 'Marmite' Adverts click on the following link http://youtube.com/watch?v=eean1pNVkoY

Other adverts that have been banned by the ASA are the ‘Sky TV adverts’ for misleading viewers. Sky’s advert stated:

‘Want to be ready when your terrestrial TV signal is switched off? Sky TV is the only way to go digital right now"

(2007)

To find out more about this story visit http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a42480/sky-tv-ads-banned-by-asa.html

Another T.V advert that ASA received complaints about was the ‘KFC’ advert. The complaints were claiming that it was encouraging children to copy and talk with the mouth full.
After a long investigation the ASA made this statement

‘Once taught good table manners, children would be unlikely to adversely change their behavior simply by watching this commercial," the ASA said in its judgment.’ (2005)

The ASA did not force the advertisers to remove the advert from our screens, KFC decided to no longer show it after their period of broadcasting had ended.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jun/01/advertising.asa

Although some adverts do get banned for a number of reasons, many advertisers follow the Advertising standards codes and their adverts are very effective. One T.V advert that I think is very clever is the ‘Carry on Cleaning’ advertising ‘Bounty’ kitchen roll. I think the advert is really well edited. It uses the old carry-on characters such as ‘Sid’ to catch the viewers’ attention.

Interviews

For my portfolio I was required to interview two people with jobs within the media industry. This was a great opportunity to develop some interviewing skills, but also to find out what it’s like working within the industry.
Before each interview we got into groups of three and discussed what questions we were each going to ask. We took careful consideration in planning what questions would work and what wouldn’t but also questions that would be relevant to what we want to find out. During an interview it’s best to ask ‘open’ questions such as

• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Who?
• How?
• Which?
• Why?

Because that way your more likely to get a detailed answer rather than a “yes” or “No”. When interviewing someone as an Interviewer it’s best to ask just one question to the interviewee at a time rather than multiple questions such as

‘ Why was it that the meeting broke up in disorder, and how will you prevent this happening in future? Was there a disruptive element?
- McLeish (2007)

‘The interviewee presented with two questions may answer the first and then genuinely forget the second, or my exercise the apparent option to answer which one is easier. In either case there is a loss of control on the part of the interviewer, as the initiative passes to the interviewee.’
- McLeish (2007)

Reference:
McLEISH, R. (2007) Radio Production. Oxford: Focal Press


The first person we interviewed was Kim Brooke a director. Kim gave us some extremely long interesting answers and this interview was quite a challenge to edit because we had to cut a 36minute interview down to just 2minutes. At first this task seemed quite daunting because I was unsure of what material to keep, and what to cut out but after listening to the interview a number of times, making notes of relevant information. I decided to structure my interview like a timeline of Kim’s career.
Starting with the first question ‘What interested you about a career within the media industry?’ What career path did you take?’ ‘What are you working on now? And What’s next for you?

The second person we interviewed was a director called Tom Cholmondeley. During this interview I wanted to take another direction, rather than finding out a timeline of his career, I wanted to find out what it’s like to be a director.
Again before the interview we each planned what questions we were going to ask, what order we were going to ask them in and what we each wanted to get from the interview.
Tom gave us some long interesting answers and stories from his career. Like Kim’s interview Tom’s was equally hard to edit – because there was so much material it’s difficult to select what is best to use and what isn’t. But I just listened through the interview a couple of times making notes of good questions with good answers and then began editing. It was a little disappointing we had to cut the interview down to just 2miutes because there is so much material that is really interesting to listening to and very entertaining. I would have liked to have, been able to edit together a longer interview. However having the chance to interview these people gave me the opportunity to develop my interviewing techniques, which then helped me when interviewing medical professionals for our group radio show. I felt more confident in being able to interview. Although I did feel a little nervous before interviewing the medical professionals because this time I was on my own and when interviewing the directors I was in a group of three. However I think all the interviews went well and I am pleased with the final outcome.

U.K Children’s T.V Programmes Decline.

For quite a while now children’s T.V programmes has regularly been mentioned within the media’s news due to the increasing cuts of British children’s programmes and OFCOM have tried to come up with ways of trying to prevent this.

When I was younger there was plenty of children’s T.V programmes on terrestrial T.V channels in the mornings before school, and after school between 3 and 5pm. The majority of children’s programmes shown on BBC 1 (CBBC) and ITV (CITV) were aimed towards British children and were often British made programmes such as ‘Basil Brush’ and ‘The Worse Witch’



These days with the increasingly growing number of multi-channels it has helped to cut the amount of British T.V programmes shown because more International programmes are being imported such as ‘Hannah Montana’ shown on the popular ‘Disney channel’ and ‘Drake and Josh’ shown on ‘Nickelodeon’.






According to Owen Gibson a Media Correspondent of The Guardian (2007) the amount of hours of children’s programmes broadcast on ITV have fallen by 60% and on channel 5 by 58%.

Now that ITV have cut all costs to make more British children’s programmes and no longer have the CITV hours shown after school, it’s down to the BBC independent producers to keep making British T.V programmes but with the recent job cuts at the BBC cutting almost half of their staff contracts it’s highly likely that it’s going to be more repeats and even more imports. There is also an on going discussion to move children’s programmes from BBC1 to BBC2.

According to an article published on the Timesonline

‘OFCOM said that programmes aimed at British children would continue to decline because more producers wanted shows that would sell internationally’

The article also stated that

‘OFCOM found that despite the number of children’s dedicated channels rising to 25, the spending on British programming fell from £127 million in 1998 to £109 million in 2006.’


Although many children’s programmes are being imported, the British children’s programmes such as ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’ and ‘The Story of Tracy Beaker’ shown on the CBBC channel on digital T.V are proving to be more popular than programmes shown on other children’s channels according to the BARB data.





So is it right that more and more cuts should be made in producing British children’s programmes?

‘OFCOM suggested that a specific fund for children’s programmes could be created, possibly from a levy on commercial broadcasters. A new children’s “public service broadcaster” could be set up making programmes for the internet, mobile phones and Television.’

But one things for sure British Programmes are going to continue to decline whether we like or not.
Although this appears to be an economic thing, I believe that British children’s programmes should continued to be made so that British culture is represented and British children can relate to programmes as well as be entertained.

THE PITCH

Well this week as been a little hectic trying to get everything organised for the radio programme pitch. For one of the modules on the course we needed to work within groups to produce a radio programme. But before we can go ahead and make the programme we need to sell our idea to a panel. For this project I am working in a group of three with Simon and Kate. Our programme idea is about sleep disorders focusing on 'Insomnia'. The programme will be in the style of an informative documentary which will include an interview with a doctor, some popular culture, some historical information and some facts.

As head researcher of the team it is my responsibility to gather plenty of content for the radio programme. Before pitching our programme idea I researched the radio station we were pitching too, which was BBC Radio 4.








The first thing I wanted to find out was how popular radio 4 is and how many listeners’ they reach. I found this information by going to the RAJAR website which is similar to the BARB website except BARB collects the data ratings for television and RAJAR collects the ratings for radio. I found out that during the September days in 2007 BBC Radio 4 reached 9,262000 listeners’.
Our target audience for the programme is mainly women and therefore after researching the programmes on BBC Radio 4 an ideal time would be to broadcast the programme around 8pm after ‘Women’s Hour Drama’ a time when the majority of listeners’ will be women. Also because ‘Women’s Hour’ was rated 3rd top programme last week and regularly features within the top ten programmes.
Simon is the group editor and will edit the programme’s content together and Katie is the group’s producer and it is her responsibility to handle the budget and take an over all look on the programme’s development ensuring everything is coming together.
After the pitch some of the panel members made a few suggestions on how we could improve our programme. One suggestion was to include facts about animal sleeping patterns. This is something that we have chosen to include in the programme.
Overall I think our pitch went well, we all made a good contribution to the presentation and it’s content. I think we all came across confident, if I was going to improve anything about our presentation / pitch it would be to make the power-point presentation a little more exciting rather than using just white slides and black text. The reason we chose to just have white slides with black text is because its clear for the panel to read.

Also this week I began researching material to include into my Power-Point presentation for part of the module BC1001. I have decided to look at the roles of OFCOM, BBC, and BBFC in protecting children. The reason I chose to look at this area is beacsue there is alot of content and regualtions involved with protecting children and I thought that it would be an interesting area to research and present. I will be able to apply the skills that I developed from being the head researcher in the group project to this assignment again taken on the role of researcher but also the role of producer and director.