Banning commercials from ITV's royal wedding coverage is a result of confused thinking
A small group of ITV programmes share the distinction of having been screened without commercial breaks: they include the funerals of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana and the 1978 drama Jesus of Nazareth. This potential quiz answer will now include Prince William's wedding after a ruling from Ofcom that the couple must marry without corporate distraction.
This decision, though, is a perfect example of the regulatory mess into which British TV gets by imposing old values on a new broadcasting environment. Although the rule is rooted in British broadcasting's traditional exaggerated deference towards the royals, the official defence of the restriction is that it prevents tasteless juxtapositions of material.
There's a plausible argument that a state funeral, in its gravity and finality, should not be chopped into lumps interrupted by shopping. But a wedding is a jolly and even vulgar affair which has already spawned shelves of official and unofficial merchandise and street parties, for which supermarkets have created branded tuck. If the argument really is over appropriate images, mid-wedding selling slots would be unlikely to contain anything in worse taste than the stag and hen nights of the participants. And far more uncomfortable junctions occur most nights during ITV1's News at Ten, when coverage of earthquakes, wars or murders is routinely interrupted to allow the huckstering of various products. If a report on famine segues into takeaway pizza, the viewer makes the mental adjustment or tries the BBC.
That would be the grown-up approach to 29 April. On one of the rare occasions when BBC1 and ITV are showing the same thing, shouldn't the distinction be greater than a toss-up between Huw Edwards and Phillip Schofield? Some corporations would want to buy space, others wouldn't. Individual viewers could decide whether they want their marriage with ads or without.
The current confused policy, which will penalise ITV financially as it negotiates a terrible recession, needs rethinking. In a culture where many viewers have a sophisticated attitude towards both television and the royal family, banning ads during a marriage makes as much sense as outlawing the golf coverage from showing large stretches of grass with holes in it.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/apr/07/television-television
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