TV Food Advertising to Children: an imminent review by OFCOM

26 September 2008

On 23 July, OFCOM announced that, at the request of the Government, it was bringing forward its review of the effects of the HFSS TV advertising restrictions that it and BCAP had introduced last year.  In early 2007, OFCOM had announced TV scheduling restrictions to be introduced in stages before the beginning of 2009, and BCAP had announced restrictions on the content of TV advertisements, for food or soft drink products, directed to children.  The Government expected those changes to reduce the exposure of children to HFSS advertisements; OFCOM expected the number of impacts on children aged between 4 and 15 years to fall by about 40% between 2003 and 2009.

The review will look at whether:  

● the scheduling restrictions are likely to achieve the objective of reducing impacts on children.  OFCOM will look at how children’s viewing habits have changed over time and how advertising activity among what it calls “core categories” has changed across media; those categories cover all food and drinks regardless of whether products are HFSS or non-HFSS.  Unless it has a Nutrient Profile of all food and soft drink products advertised on television, the review will, BCAP believes, have to estimate the effect on HFSS product ad impacts on children;  

● the impact on broadcasters has been in line with OFCOM’s expectations.  The review will examine TV ad expenditure patterns in core category products and evaluate actions the broadcasters have taken to mitigate the impact of the restrictions.  It will cover broadcaster revenue trends from food and drink ads and sponsorship and from non-food product ads and sponsorship and changes in HFSS and non-HFSS revenue;  

● the scheduling and content restrictions are working as intended or whether unexpected difficulties have emerged in interpretation, implementation or enforcement.  OFCOM will look at adherence to the scheduling restrictions and the ASA will look at compliance with BCAP’s ad content restrictions and report its findings to OFCOM.  In a survey in July last year, the first month in which new restrictions for non-broadcast food and drink ads to children came into force alongside those for television, the ASA surveyed 292 TV ads and 467 non-broadcast ads and found no breaches of the newly introduced restrictions.  Six ads, however, broke other code clauses (five on grounds of misleadingness and inadequate evidence and one on health and safety grounds), a breach rate of less than 1%.  BCAP hopes for a similarly excellent result this time;  

●  advertisers are evading the spirit of the restrictions by advertising or sponsoring in children’s airtime in the name of brands that are commonly associated with HFSS products or by increasing the amount of HFSS product advertising and sponsorship when significant numbers of children are watching outside children’s airtime .  The review will look at how advertisers have reacted to the restrictions and analyse trends in ad and sponsorship content before and after the introduction of the restrictions.

BCAP believes the results of the review will be announced in the last few weeks of this year.  We expect the results to show that the food and soft drink and broadcasting industries have acted responsibly in implementing the restrictions.

For information about OFCOM’s last update on how things were progressing at the beginning of this year and about the forthcoming review, please visit www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/update