Currie Pledges Support For Co-Regulation Of Industry
Lord Currie, the chairman of the new communications super-regulator, Ofcom, has pledged his support for co-regulation of the broadcast advertising industry.
Speaking at the annual Advertising Association lunch yesterday, he commented: “Regulatory intervention should involve the least intrusive method possible to achieve the regulatory and public policy requirements we must discharge. This means a greater reliance on the industry to police its own affairs where possible the action is, by definition, likely to be better informed and more proportionate than will the judgement of a purely external regulator.”
Advertisers have been campaigning for a move towards the self-regulation of broadcast advertising for some time. Both the Advertising Association and ISBA welcomed the Communications Bill as a significant step in the right direction (see Advertising Groups Welcome Move Towards Self-Regulation).
Currie claims the status of advertising is unique, commenting: “Advertising only works if consumers believe it and are attracted by it, There is thus a strong alignment between the incentives of advertisers and the interests of the regulator and of consumers that advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful.”
Currie’s views are not likely to go down well with consumers groups and activists who have been campaigning against advertising to children. Supporters of the Children’s Television Advertising Bill have claimed Britain’s ad market is dominated by toothless and greedy regulators who have given advertisers unrivalled access to impressionable children. By contrast regulators in Germany and the Netherlands ensured there is no advertising aimed at children during youth programming (see MPs Push To Ban Food Ads Aimed At Children).
Currie clearly believes that the principles of unfettered market capitalism can govern the broadcasting marketplace: “I believe it is nearly always better to let the market and consumers choice, rather than detailed regulatory prescription, decide the best way to achieve a specified public policy outcome,” he said.
This is not a view shared by many academics and cultural commentators who have argued that the market values create lowest common denominator programming, regarding viewers as a market to be sold to rather than an audience to be empowered and educated (see Communications Bill May Create ‘Cultural Jurassic Park’).
DCMS: 020 7211 6200 www.dcms.gov.uk
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