Sunday ad ban should go
Stuff reports:
The Government is considering scrapping the Sunday morning and public holiday bans on television and radio advertising.
Broadcasting Minister Amy Adams said she wanted to make the rules governing traditional and new media more consistent.
The Government is also canvassing changes to election programming rules and the way internet television programmes are classified.
Television stations are prevented by the Broadcasting Act from carrying advertisements between 6am and noon on Sunday, and on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day morning, while online media are not.
The public holiday advertising bans also apply to radio stations.
The broadcasting ad restrictions should go. They once may have made sense when broadcasting was so dominant, but today they are farcical.
Many are like me and don’t watch live TV anyway. I record stuff on My Sky and watch delayed, ignoring ads anyway.
Also people are watching torrents, DVDs, Netflix, You Tube etc.
Broadcasting is going to struggle to survive anyway, without additional restrictions such as no advertising on Sunday mornings.
Plus why Sundays? The prohibition is probably originally religious, but in a secular society, we should not have days when the state prohibits certain activity.
Green Party broadcasting spokesman Gareth Hughes opposed lifting the ad bans, “unless we have a proper commercial-free public broadcasting option”.
You do – Radio NZ and Maori TV.
“It is important there is a little bit of peace and quiet in our hectic modern world,” he said.
I’d rather not have MPs decide if I need to be sheltered from advertisements on TV on a Sunday.
But Adams said the consideration being given to lifting the ad-ban had nothing to do with supporting the state-owned broadcaster.
“It is increasingly indefensible to distinguish whether something is on TV, radio or the internet; whether it’s tax treatment, advertising or election programming, I am saying it is time we had a consistent approach,” she said.
Good.