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Channel Regulation: Swedes Will Fight Children’s Advertising All The Way

Financial Times business card 1995
As a reporter for two Financial Times newsletters, New Media Markets and Screen Finance, I covered the rapidly growing UK (and Scandinavian) television and new media markets and the expanding film-financing sector in Europe.

By David South

Financial Times New Media Markets (NMM) (London, UK), November 30, 1995

ISSN: 02654717

OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 1266447669

The Swedish government is set to clamp down on satellite channels which carry advertising aimed at children and will tell channels to drop such advertising or face legal action.

The centre-left government’s threat of tough action follows Sweden’s winning extra powers last week through an amendment to the European directive on transfrontier broadcasting agreed by European culture ministers (NMM 13:42). 

The main focus of the Swedish government’s wrath is the TV3 channel, owned by Kinnevik, which uplinks to the Astra 1a and Sirius satellites from the UK. TV3 based itself in the UK in order to benefit from the Independent Television Commission’s more liberal rules on advertising. 

TV3’s main commercial television rival, TV4, has long protested to the government about what it sees as unfair competition from TV3 and other foreign-based channels. 

The government will initially go after TV3 and the Luxembourg-based cable and satellite channel Femmen. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs said that pro-European satellite channels such as TNT/Cartoon Network and the Children’s Channel were lesser priorities, but could face action in the future. 

TNT/Cartoon Network has a Swedish soundtrack and many Children’s Channel programmes are subtitled in Swedish on cable systems.

The Ministry of Cultural Affairs plans a two-pronged attack to remove the advertising it finds offensive and which is banned under Swedish broadcasting law: advertising aimed at children under 12 and carried in breaks around children’s programming. 

First, the consumer-protection agency the Konsument Ombudsmanen will take action against advertising agencies which produce children’s advertising. Monica Bengtsson, a legal adviser to the Ministry of Culture, said that agencies will be warned once and then fined if they violate the rules a second time. 

If this fails – and some observers believe that it will, because advertisers could move their accounts to non-Swedish agencies – the Ombudsmanen would then try the riskier move of taking channels to court to stop the ads. 

The Ombudsmanen is not expected to act until it hears the results of the case it has already taken to the European Court of Justice against Italian children’s magazine publishers De Agostini for allegedly placing commercials targetting children under the age of 12 on both TV4 and TV3. Judgement is expected in mid-1996. 

The Swedish government is also banking on public opinion to help pressure satellite channels to stop showing children’s advertising. The political climate in Sweden is strongly in favour of strict controls on advertising aimed at children. Swedish prime minister, Ingvar Carlsson, made cracking down on such advertising a key part of his opening speech to the present session of the Swedish parliament. 

The amended directive (which still needs the approval of the European Parliament) allows a member state to ban children’s advertisements under its own rules even if the channel satisfies the rules of the country from which it is broadcast. 

The Swedish government believes that the combination of the amended directive provisions and its ban on children’s advertising is all it needs to prevent the adverts. 

Per Bystedt, vice-president of TV3, insisted this week that the channel is UK-licensed and therefore does not fall under Swedish law: “We are following the Independent Television Commission’s rules.”

New definitions on which countries are responsible for regulating channels, adopted by the European culture ministers last week, could lead to TV3 being regulated in Sweden rather than the more liberal UK if it is deemed that the channel is really established there. However, the Swedish government has investigated the extent to which TV3 is based in the UK and, according to Bystedt, has declared that it is satisfied that the company is British. 

New Media Markets and Screen Finance were published by the Financial Times in the 1990s.
Do TV porn channels degrade and humiliate?
New Media Markets and Screen Finance
NSD partners in bitter row over choice of satellite as Brussels deadline nears
Playboy ‘is not for sad and lonely single men’
From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK
UK laws on satellite porn among toughest in Europe
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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive Blogroll

Do TV porn channels degrade and humiliate?

Financial Times business card 1995
As a reporter for two Financial Times newsletters, New Media Markets and Screen Finance, I covered the rapidly growing UK (and Scandinavian) television and new media markets and the expanding film-financing sector in Europe.

By David South

Financial Times New Media Markets (London, UK), October 26, 1995

ISSN: 02654717

OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 1266447669

Susan Sontag, the renowned American essayist, described pornography as a “crutch for the pyschologically deformed and brutalisation of the morally innocent.” The Campaign Against Pornography in the UK believes that pornography exploits women and children “in a degrading and humiliating way, often with the message that we enjoy this and want to be abused.”

The campaign encourages its supporters to take direct action against any distributor of pornographic material as part of its wider campaign to put the industry out of business.

The porn channels dismiss arguments that they degrade women and encourage male violence against women. Playboy managing director Rita Lewis argues that “women are happy to consume erotic imagery like pin-ups. Women are not hung-up by this anymore, they are not threatened by the fantasy women we show in our programming. We hope Playboy will lead to couples’ making love together.”

Andrew Wren, financial director of the Adult Channel, also dismisses the link between pornographic programming and sexual violence. “I don’t think there is anything in programmes that would encourage men to go and rape. Women are interested in sex as men are.”

Television X’s (Deric) Botham says that porn programmes are “a bit of titilation” in the fine, upstanding tradition of the British Carry On films. None the less, he admits that “I wouldn’t want my daughter to get involved in pornography.”

He says that the women involved in the programmes, some of them housewives, are willing participants and enjoy the opportunity. “I don’t produce anything that is against the law. We speak to the individuals concerned. If you have a reluctant model, it doesn’t work – I just won’t buy the video.”

The Campaign Against Pornography sees it all rather differently. Ann Mayne, a member of the campaign’s management committee, was particularly critical of two programmes on Television X – Shag Nasty and Mutley and Fly on the Wall.

She said that Shag Nasty and Mutley, in which a presenter approaches women in the street or in supermarkets and offers them £25 to look at their knickers, or £50 to be filmed having sex with him, gave the message that women were simply objects and that it was acceptable to harass them.

“It is complete prostitution of female sexuality,” she said. “Botham wants full-on, across-the-board prostitution of women. In his view, every woman must have a price.”

Mayne said that Fly on the Wall, in which real-life couples are shown having sex, was an open invitation for men to coerce their partners into being filmed, possibly to the point of abuse.


From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK

New Media Markets and Screen Finance were published by the Financial Times in the 1990s.

Read more on the 1990s sex economy here: From Special Report: Sexual Dealing: Today’s Sex Toys Are Credit Cards & Cash: A Report On The Sex-For-Money Revolution

Update: It is over 20 years since this Special Report was published. The Internet now plays a significant role in the growth of sex content and the sex industry and vice versa. Here is an interesting overview of the situation in 2020. The Internet is for Porn – It always was, it always will be.

“One of the biggest and most interesting things happening in the consumer web right now is running almost completely under the radar. It has virtually zero Silicon Valley involvement. There are no boastful VCs getting rich. It is utterly absent from tech’s plethora of twitters, fora and media (at least, as they say, “on main”). Indeed, the true extent of its incredible success has gone almost completely unnoticed, even by its many, many, many customers.

I’m talking, of course, about OnlyFans.” 

Channel Regulation: Swedes Will Fight Children’s Advertising All The Way
New Media Markets and Screen Finance
NSD partners in bitter row over choice of satellite as Brussels deadline nears
Playboy ‘is not for sad and lonely single men’
Popular Chinese Social Media Chase New Markets
From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK
From Special Report: Sexual Dealing: Today’s Sex Toys Are Credit Cards & Cash: A Report On The Sex-For-Money Revolution
Undercurrents: A Cancellation At CBC TV Raises A Host Of Issues For The Future
UK laws on satellite porn among toughest in Europe

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive Blogroll

Playboy ‘is not for sad and lonely single men’

Financial Times business card 1995
As a reporter for two Financial Times newsletters, New Media Markets and Screen Finance, I covered the rapidly growing UK (and Scandinavian) television and new media markets and the expanding film-financing sector in Europe.

By David South

Financial Times New Media Markets (London, UK), October 26, 1995

ISSN: 02654717

OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 1266447669

The Playboy Channel, due to launch in the UK on November 1, is trying to position itself as being a cut above the existing sex channels with which it will compete for subscribers. 

The channel, which is running an advertising campaign costing more than £1.5 million, believes that its big budgets and slick production values will attract viewers who have hitherto been uninterested in so-called “adult” entertainment. It hopes to win an audience among women as well as men. 

Managing director Rita Lewis dismisses the other sex channels as being aimed at people who are “a bit sad and on their own”. The channels promote “deviant” behaviour. 

Playboy hopes to attract happy, heterosexual couples who will treat the channel as an aid to foreplay: “We hope Playboy will lead to couples’ making love,” said Lewis, who believes that women, as well as men “are happy to consume erotic imagery like pin-ups.”

In the USA, according to Lewis, 70 per cent of the audience for the channel comprises couples. 

She said that the UK Playboy will run programmes that have more in common with programmes like Channel Four’s The Good Sex Guide. “These days, a whole bunch of people are sampling erotic programming like The Good Sex Guide. It is very sexy programming with mass-market appeal.”  

Playboy’s movies would have a high standard of production, she said, very different from what she claims to be the cheap programming made for the other channels, often home videos and often shot with hand-held cameras. 

Playboy’s programming will comprise sex films, interviews with “centrefold” models, documentaries on the sex industry and general-entertainment programming such as quiz shows. 

The rival channels claim that Playboy will not be a big threat to them. The Adult Channel’s Wren says that all the new channels “hype the market, which helps us.” In any case, adult entertainment consumers have already been weaned on a harder mix of programming and do not want something that offers little more than what Channel Four shows. 

The UK Playboy Channel, which is owned by UK programmer Flextech (51 per cent), British Sky Broadcasting (30 per cent) and Playboy Enterprises (19 per cent), will transmit from between midnight and 4am on the Bravo transponder on Astra 1c. 

From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK

New Media Markets and Screen Finance were published by the Financial Times in the 1990s.

Read more on the 1990s sex economy here: From Special Report: Sexual Dealing: Today’s Sex Toys Are Credit Cards & Cash: A Report On The Sex-For-Money Revolution

Update: It is over 20 years since this Special Report was published. The Internet now plays a significant role in the growth of sex content and the sex industry and vice versa. Here is an interesting overview of the situation in 2020. The Internet is for Porn – It always was, it always will be.

“One of the biggest and most interesting things happening in the consumer web right now is running almost completely under the radar. It has virtually zero Silicon Valley involvement. There are no boastful VCs getting rich. It is utterly absent from tech’s plethora of twitters, fora and media (at least, as they say, “on main”). Indeed, the true extent of its incredible success has gone almost completely unnoticed, even by its many, many, many customers.

I’m talking, of course, about OnlyFans.” 

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2021

Categories
Archive Blogroll

UK laws on satellite porn among toughest in Europe

Financial Times business card 1995
As a reporter for two Financial Times newsletters, New Media Markets and Screen Finance, I covered the rapidly growing UK (and Scandinavian) television and new media markets and the expanding film-financing sector in Europe.

By David South

Financial Times New Media Markets (London, UK), October 26, 1995

ISSN: 02654717

OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 1266447669

UK regulations on what can be shown on sex channels are tougher than in most countries of the European Union. Channels such as the hard-core Swedish TV Erotica and the recently-launched French Rendezvous are licensed in their respective countries and transmit explicit scenes of sexual intercourse, straight and gay, featuring close-up shots of copulating genitals. 

Graff Pay-Per-View, the experienced US sex channel operator, consciously decided to exclude the UK as a market for its hard-core Eurotica channel which is licensed in Denmark and, like the other hard-core channels, transmits via a Eutelsat satellite. But pirate smart cards for the channel, as for the other channels, are available in the UK in specialist satellite shops. 

Graff’s seeming respect for the UK regulations may not be unconnected with the fact that it owns the Adult Channel and would be wary of upsetting the ITC. Broadcasting unacceptable material into the UK could provoke the ITC into seeing Graff as a body unfit to hold a licence, thereby threatening the Adult Channel. 

The ITC’s guidelines on sexually explicit material state that representations of sexual intercourse can be shown only after 9pm and that “the portrayal of sexual behaviour, and of nudity, needs to be defensible in context and presented with tact and discretion.”

There has been some relaxation of the rule. The ITC will, on an experimental basis, allow the watershed to be broken by a ppv or video-on-demand service. It is not, however, prepared to give this freedom to a porn channel, at least not in the early days, because it does not want to be seen to be licensing pornography. The relaxation will affect only general services. 

The ITC will also monitor any ppv service to ensure that there are no cases of children accessing the programming before deciding if the programme code should be revised. 

The transmission pf 18-rated films on terrestrial or new-media channels is not permitted before 10pm. Films with a 15-rating are not allowed before 9pm on terrestrial channels such as BSkyB’s Sky Movies or the Movie Channel. These are minimum requirements. Some 15-rated films, for instance those which show scenes of sexual intercourse or drug-taking, would not be deemed suitable for transmission even on an encrypted channel at 8pm. 

In practice, the ITC does not permit depictions of erect penises, anal intercourse, close-ups of genitalia or ejaculation. 

Where channels have overstepped the mark and gone abroad to get licences from less strict authorities – the late Red Hot Dutch and TV Erotica – the ITC has recommended that the channels be proscribed, action which has subsequently been taken by the Department of National Heritage. The ITC is now monitoring the Rendezvous channel, which shows a mix of gay and heterosexual hard-core pornography with graphic scenes of sexual intercourse. 

The DNH issues proscription orders under Sections 177 and 178 of the Broadcasting Act. The orders make it a criminal offence to supply equipment to receive the channels or to market and advertise them. 

The European Union directive on transfrontier broadcasting lays down that one country cannot prevent the reception of channels licensed by other European Union countries. However, it allows individual governments to take action against any broadcast which could damage the physical, mental or moral development of minors. 

From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK

From Special Report: NMM (New Media Markets) Spotlight On The Emergence Of Satellite Porn Channels In The UK
Do TV porn channels degrade and humiliate?
Playboy ‘is not for sad and lonely single men’

Read more on the 1990s sex economy here: From Special Report: Sexual Dealing: Today’s Sex Toys Are Credit Cards & Cash: A Report On The Sex-For-Money Revolution

From Special Report: Sexual Dealing: Today’s Sex Toys Are Credit Cards & Cash: A Report On The Sex-For-Money Revolution

Update: It is over 20 years since this Special Report was published. The Internet now plays a significant role in the growth of sex content and the sex industry and vice versa. Here is an interesting overview of the situation in 2020. The Internet is for Porn – It always was, it always will be.

“One of the biggest and most interesting things happening in the consumer web right now is running almost completely under the radar. It has virtually zero Silicon Valley involvement. There are no boastful VCs getting rich. It is utterly absent from tech’s plethora of twitters, fora and media (at least, as they say, “on main”). Indeed, the true extent of its incredible success has gone almost completely unnoticed, even by its many, many, many customers.

I’m talking, of course, about OnlyFans.”

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2021