P Day can give way to CRR Day, one day!
Raymond Snoddy says more than ten years after the CRR was first dreamed up by Granada a lot of the heat could have oozed out of the argument and CRR may be no more contentious than product placement…
Just as 16 June will forever be “Bloomsday” after James Joyce’s hero of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, so Monday 28 February should become known as “P Day” in media circles.
“P Day” – as in product placement becoming legal in the commercial television industry from Monday for the first time in human history Day.
And it doesn’t get much more auspicious than that.
The “P” to mark the fact that cash has changed hands to get a can of coke – no lager please – included prominently in a drama or even a documentary must be there for a full three seconds at the beginning of such a programme and the end.
Blink and you could miss it.
Like many battles that have gone on for years it won’t however be long before we wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place – like probably next Wednesday.
The coke can won’t be shoved in our face otherwise we will switch over. The sums of money going to the television companies will be modest but the liberalisation of the rules, combined with other newish innovations such as sponsorship, will at least help to boost revenues in difficult competitive times.
But “P Day” has got more than one innovation going for it.
Ofcom, with a nice sense of timing and determination to make an occasion out of it, has also decreed that from Monday, for at least a year, television channels will be able to show longer advertising breaks in films and dramas.
In the experiment, which will probably become permanent, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 will be able to show up to 12 minutes of ads an hour instead of the current seven.
This could have dangerous consequences. Younger audiences whose attention spans are notoriously short might wander off. The more mature might forget the subtle intricacies of plot. Everyone might be encouraged to reach for their PVR’s to teach the channels a lesson by fast-forwarding.
What is not in dispute is that Ofcom is permitting an increase in advertising even though it is in merely two defined genres.
The Ofcom decision comes after the Lords Select Committee on Communications last week decided to move in the opposite direction, rather perversely recommending that advertising time should be cut for the non-public service commercial channels. They will be reduced to seven minutes an hour instead of the current 12.
This was apparently to “improve the viewer experience” and to harmonise the rules in time for the completion of analogue switch-off next year.
Once again the law of unintended consequences strikes. The viewer experience in this case could be “improved” by reducing the amount of money available for original production and by pushing some marginal satellite channels to the wall.
It looks as if they have fallen for the oldest logical flaw in the laws of television – that all channels are somehow equal.
It is just about arguable that if they had suggested that ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 reduced their advertising time the price of air-time would have risen in answer to the dictates of supply and demand.
With an endless number of satellite channels and lots and lots of inventory the supply and demand effect will be attenuated to say the least in the satellite channels. The likeliest impact will be fewer advertising minutes on the channels with equal lower earnings.
There is an unstated assumption in the minds of their Lordships and their talk of harmonisation on minutage that somehow ITV is the same as a small satellite channel. They are not and never will be and the only similarity is that both involve moving pictures visually displayed.
As to their recommendation on the abolition of CRR (Contract Rights Renewal) it wasn’t straight abolition – it was a very conditional affair.
Abolition would come in return for the investment of at least 50% of the estimated rise in revenues of between £30 million and £55 million that would result.
It was the compromise proposed by Lord Bragg and the extra investment would go into “quality, wide-ranging, original UK programming on ITV 1” and training.
Naturally our old friends solemn and binding undertakings would be involved.
So lets take a pessimistic view on the numbers and accept that ITV might offer up half of £30 million a year for additional “quality” programmes.
The problems of definition and monitoring are obvious.
And the Committee appears not to have taken account of the recent strong finding of the Competition Commission, which astutely noted that “ITV’s unrivalled ability to deliver large audiences on ITV1 means that CRR undertakings are still needed” to avoid ITV exploiting such a position.
The world has changed since 2003 when the CRR was introduced – but then again not that much. All channels are not equal.
The mechanism should be reformed and gradually eased over time in line with market conditions.
It was actually scary appearing before the Lords Committee in the company of media panjandrum’s such as John Billet, who appeared to be one of the rare human beings who actually understand the subtleties of the arguments of both sides.
It was hard to argue the case for reform in the face of Billett declaring bluntly that CRR should be abolished and that advertisers now had a range of alternatives to ITV – substitutability.
You either believe that or you don’t.
But at least one thought offered up appears to have borne fruit – the appointment of a quick and dirty expert panel to review the issue, although the original suggestion that the panel should look at ways of improving or easing CRR has been broadened to look at the trading system for television advertising.
The good news is that all this too shall pass.
Abolition or substantial alteration of CRR will require primary legislation and that will probably come in the form of a comprehensive Communications Act in 2013 or 2014.
More than ten years after the CRR was first dreamed up by Granada a lot of the heat could have oozed out of the argument and CRR may be no more contentious than product placement.
Then P Day can give way to CRR Day.