Re: Euro TV

=?iso-8859-1?Q?Torbj=F8rn?= Caspersen (Torbjoern.Caspersen@ark.unit.no)
Thu, 14 Sep 1995 14:49:32 +0200

>Hi!
>
>I am not activly involved in the media so I not sure of the technical
>details of what follows. Here in the UK we have no damned commercials at
>all on two channels(BBC1 and BBC2) these are paid for by a licence fee that
>has to be paid by every TV owner regardless of whether the view BBC
>channels or not. If you own a TV and don't choose to pay the licence you
>are liable to a fine. We also have commercial channels with advertising.
>However, these channels are subject to considerable regulation in respect
>of the quantity, sensitive timing of and nature of the advertising.
>Strange as this may seem to outsiders some of us actually endorse this
>state of affairs and as a consequence not even our free market mad Tory
>government have felt able to go for total de-regulation in this area.

>Ian Kelly

Just want to add that the same is the case in Norway. We have no
commercials on the licence financed channels, and strict regulations on the
others. The public opinion seems to be all behind this politic.

It's not easy to speculate how this can be moved to cyberspace and the
internet, but I know that the Norwegian laws for advertising will apply
also things on-line, i.e. not too much violence, sex, sexism, hollow
promises, etc.

The net has a big advantage though. Through public feed-back, much of the
advertising can be controlled. No-one would dare to run something which
obviously set them in a bad light (That is, if not the public commotion was
the purpose). Mailstorms and spamming can be usefull tools to socially
control ads. (I hope)

-----------------------------------------
Torbjoern Caspersen casper@due.unit.no
http://www.stud.unit.no/~casper/
Student of Architecture
at the Norwegian faculty of technology, NTH, Trondheim.