Let’s extend the signal on child TV adverts
Their response reminds us of the wailing that characterised the vintners’ response to the proposed ban on smoking in the workplace.
We who are concerned about child-targeted advertising are being presented with equally dire predictions of doom and gloom. The irony is that many of the quite modest proposed BCI regulations are not a million miles from the advertising lobby’s own ‘self-regulation.’
A particular concern of Irish advertisers/broadcasters is the fear that they will be placed at a competitive disadvantage in relation to their non-regulated counterparts (SKY, UTV, etc.) beaming into this jurisdiction.
Instead of pulling against the modest regulations proposed, they should seek to have these changes introduced on an EU-wide basis? This would satisfy both advertisers and those of us concerned with the damaging effects of child-targeted marketing.
Instead of affording protection to some children, as the BCI proposes, or dispensing with protection for any children, as the advertisers in practice seem to advocate, let us seek to protect all children.
Brian MacGabhann,
STAC (Stop TV Advertising to Children),
Béal an Daingin,
Connemara,
Co Galway.
