television

Definition:
One of the five 'major' ADVERTISING MEDIA in Britain. It is the second-youngest but also ranks second in terms of its share of total ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE. The history of television as a commercially-funded advertising medium paradoxically begins with the BBC's broadcast of the Coronation in 1953, which was watched by 20 million viewers on only 4 million television sets. This evidence that television was a bona fide 'mass medium' to compete with radio, newspapers and magazines lent strong support to the growing lobby for a new service, financed by advertisers, to compete with the BBC, funded by its viewers via the statutory 'licence fee'. The counter-lobbyists wielded political influence, however. Sir Winston Churchill had seen television-with-advertising in America, and predicted that a British equivalent would be a 'tuppenny Punch and Judy show'. Lord Beaverbrook, who owned the Daily Express and had an obvious vested interest in keeping advertisers' money where it was, spoke out against it in the Upper House. Others were alarmed by the assumed potential of the new medium, reaching uninvited into the privacy of the home, to exercise special persuasive power over consumers. Parliament eventually responded by requiring formal controls of television advertising as a quid pro quo for the award of broadcasting franchises. The Television Act of 1954 established an Independent Television Authority (ITA), and charged it with the statutory duty to devise and implement a system to achieve this. The first British television commercial, for Gibbs SR toothpaste, duly appeared on the new commercially-funded channel at 12 minutes and 7 seconds past 8 on the evening of 22 September 1955. For an account of the subsequent developments in the regulation of advertising in the new medium, see INDEPENDENT TELEVISION COMMISSION and ADVERTISING CONTROL. By 1959, 'independent television' (that is, not dependent on government support through a licence fee) was taking a 20 per cent share of total expenditure on media advertising, that held by the press as a whole having meanwhile fallen from almost 90 per cent to just over 70 per cent. Three years later, its share reached exactly a quarter, overtook the individual figures for both national and regional newspapers, and was four times the combined share of posters, radio and cinema. A vigorous new advertising medium was firmly established. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the figures for the new big two more or less stabilised at roughly a quarter and two thirds respectively. In the 1980s, independent television put on another spurt to settle at a new horizon of just over 30 per cent, while the total press share fell steadily to 60 per cent. It would be simplistic to say, as people did, that 'TV has killed the press', for unit price can effect a percentage figure as well as volume. Furthermore, it is more logical to compare independent television with the constituent parts of the press than with the whole of it. In 1996, actual revenue figures for each were: television, £6,413 million; regional newspapers, £2,061 million; national press, £1,510; business & professional magazines, £1,018 million: consumer magazines, £583 million. Taking this fact in conjunction with the undoubted impact of sound and moving images combined, it is easy to understand why advertisers seem to treat television as the nation's prime advertising medium, rather than the runner-up. Its share of total national advertising expenditure is about the same as in France and the USA, much lower than in Japan or Italy, but significantly higher than in Germany or the Netherlands.
In its current form, the medium mainly comprises the regionalised ITV ('independent television') network on Channel 3, plus national Channel 4 and Channel 5, morning-only national GMTV, 6 of the 26 cable channels and 33 of the 56 satellite channels originating in the UK. The ITV network in turn comprises fourteen stations in 13 ITV Regions, London being served by one during the week and another at the weekend. They are, in descending order by share of total ITV advertising revenue: Carlton, Central, LWT, Meridian, Granada, Yorkshire, Anglia, HTV, Scottish, Tyne-Tees, Westcountry, Ulster, Grampian and Border. The three 'terrestrial' channels took 44 per cent of the average weekly total television audience in 1996 versus the BBC's 46 per cent, satellite and cable television accounting for the remainder. Audience research is commissioned jointly with the BBC, via the BROADCASTERS AUDIENCE RESEARCH BOARD (BARB). Typically, ADVERTISING TIME is bought from SALES HOUSES, not from the stations themselves. Significant developments in DIGITAL TELEVISION broadcasting are on the near horizon at the time of writing, and are expected to add hundreds of additional terrestrial and satellite channels to the 40-odd options on offer to British advertisers at present. Advertisers will be faced by a huge choice and MEDIA PLANNERS by a considerable challenge to the scope of their expertise. In short, television may in effect be more than one medium (as the press to all intents and purposes already is) by the time the fourth edition of this Dictionary appears.

Cross-References:
[sales houses] [media planner] [advertising expenditure] [Independent Television Commission] [advertising control] [digital television] [advertising time] [Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB)] [advertising media]

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