ITV To Drop Ads From 11 September Documentary

ITV could lose around £500,000 in advertising revenue following its decision to show a documentary on the victims of 11 September without any ad breaks.

The hour-long documentary, called September Mourning, follows the lives of some of the families affected by the tragedy. It would normally feature around nine minutes of adverts, but ITV has decided to drop them, feeling they would not be appropriate in a programme of such a delicate nature.

A spokesperson for ITV said: “Given the nature of the content of the film, we decided that the sensitive thing to do would be to cut out the ad breaks.”

The decision appears to have been welcomed by the industry. David Peters, broadcast planning director at Carat, said: “Under the circumstances it’s absolutely the right thing to do. The programme is a totally inappropriate environment for adverts and I think the majority of brands would support ITV.”

It is understood that the documentary will be shown on ITV1 between 9pm and 10.30pm on 11 September, but the network is yet to announce the official transmission time.

ITV’s advertising revenues look set to be up by 6.0% in August, better than Merrill Lynch analysts’ expectations, which had put the growth at 3.0%. Early figures for September show ITV up 0.5% in a strong TV market which will be up by 7.0% to 9.0% (see Second Half Forecasts Put ITV Revenue Down 1.4% In 2002).

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com

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