Sweden Pushes Its Ban on Children's Ads; Broad Campaign in EU is Waged on TV Commercials

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert 		May 29, 2001

Following is an article in today's Wall Street Journal.

Sweden Pushes Its Ban on Children's Ads; 
Broad Campaign is Waged in EU on TV Commercials
by Brandon Mitchener

BRUSSELS -- When kids in Sweden watch the Pokemon cartoon series, they
don't hear the jingle that everywhere else in the world ends each show:
"Gotta catch `em all." The country's consumer ombudsman deemed it
stealth advertising, ruling that the tune is a surreptitious plug for
Pokemon playing cards.

That's illegal on Swedish television. In fact, Stockholm has prohibited
all TV advertising aimed at children under the age of 12 since 1991, so
the ruling wasn't all that radical. What alarms advertisers and
broadcasters is that Sweden wants the rest of Europe to follow its lead.
It has used its six-month stint in the rotating presidency of the
European Union to push hard for severe restrictions on television
commercials directed at youngsters, and it's made headway.

"They've understood the usefulness of a presidency to start a wider
campaign," says Stephan Loerke, a lobbyist for the World Federation of
Advertisers in Brussels. "They're gradually trying to forge a consensus
among the member states."

The crusade is well-timed. The law establishing minimum
consumer-protection standards for cross-border television broadcasts in
the EU - the 1989 Television Without Frontiers Directive, last revised
in 1997 - is up for review at the end of 2002.

Sweden is trying to forge a consensus to raise the EU's standards for
the entire union. The commission is duty-bound to hold hearings on the
directive, which outlaws all advertising within any children's
television program running for 30 or fewer minutes. An informal meeting
by the EU's culture ministers discussed the subject yesterday and they
are expected to take it up again in Luxembourg in June.

An outright ban modeled on Sweden's is unlikely anytime soon. But
increasingly tough partial bans, especially on commercials directed at
small children, aren't. Partial bans could cover ads that appear within
five minutes of a children's television show, for example. Or junk food
ads could be banned altogether around kids' TV. What's more, to
forestall government rules, the advertising and broadcasting industries
could implement limits "voluntarily".

Many of the EU's 15 members have harsh restrictions on their books -
including three of the four countries that will each hold the presidency
for six-month stretches over the next two years, and that will set the
agenda for meetings of EU cultural ministers and summits of heads of
state.

Belgium takes over in July, and Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of the
country, prohibits any advertising within five minutes of a
Dutch-language children's TV program broadcast from within the country.
Denmark recently convinced domestic broadcasters to voluntarily abide by
a five-minute rule. Greece doesn't permit stations to run commercials
for toy guns, tanks or other instruments of war, and bars ads for all
other toys between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Lawmakers in Norway, Italy and Poland are debating setting similar
boundaries, to the horror of broadcasters. "A ban on children's
advertising would be catastrophic for Europe's television production
community," says Cindy Rose, a Brussels-based lobbyist for Walt Disney
Co. of Burbank, California. "They rely on advertising revenues to fund
high-quality children's programming."

Broadcasters argue that the revenue generated in the EU every year by TV
ads for children's products - between 670 million euros and 1 billion
euros - is essential for the creation of quality children's programming.
European governments have been pushing television stations to produce
more of their own shows, to reduce the amount of American-made content
that fills up TV schedules, but for-profit station owners say that
without sufficient ad revenue, only fee-supported broadcasters will be
able to even try to do so.

For its part, the European Commission, the EU's executive branch,
believes kid-directed advertising is already adequately regulated in the
EU. The commission recently conducted a comprehensive review of existing
rules in the union and found that, with the possible exception of those
regarding pornography and violence, "we don't need to change anything,"
says Christophe Forax, a spokesman for European Education and Culture
Commissioner Viviane Reding.

But many countries think more is needed. "We'd agree: no advertising
during children's programs," says Pascal Ennaert, an adviser to the
youth minister of Flanders, who will be responsible for youth issues
during the Belgian EU presidency. Flanders has the five-minute rule, but
it has no control over Dutch channels broadcast from the Netherlands, or
over French programs coming from other parts of Belgium -- or over
anything transmitted via satellite.

The porosity of national borders when it comes to broadcast signals is a
problem for Stockholm, too: All of Europe would have to outlaw
children's advertising for Sweden's total ban to really work, especially
with the proliferation of satellite broadcasts and Internet Web-casts.
"Commercial pressure on children is increasing," says Maria Gasste, who
heads the unit on children's television in the media division of the
Swedish culture ministry.

Ms. Gasste, who has two young sons and has watched Pokemon with them at
home, accuses the advertising industry of trying to polarize the issue
in terms of a total ban vs. total freedom. "They say if you don't have
brutal killings in the ads it's okay," she says. "It's not that easy."

While it seems unlikely that all TV ads pointed toward children will be
banned throughout the EU, advertisers and broadcasters are preparing to
fight moves to tighten current checks. "Talk and talk of a ban and then
settle for restrictions to TV advertising when it comes to the review of
the directive - that appears to be the Swedish tactic," says Simon
Pitts, European affairs manager for U.K. broadcaster ITV. "The result
would be the same in either case."

Sweden's Radio and TV Act has banned ads directed at kids from the first
day that commercial television was allowed in the country on July 1,
1991. The ban was based on research that indicates children can't fully
distinguish between advertising and programming until about age 10.

Scandinavian satellite broadcaster TV3 beams its Swedish-language
channel from a base in the U.K. Sweden challenged the broadcaster's
right to do that in Europe's top court and lost.

TV3's only commercial competitor, TV4, is the one that ran into the
Pokemon wall. The national consumer ombudsman last year won a court
injunction declaring the "Gotta catch 'em all" rap - sung in Swedish --
a strictly commercial part of the cartoon series, and therefore a breach
of the anti-ad law.

Nintendo Co. of Kyoto, Japan, which owns the Pokemon franchise, didn't
return calls seeking comment.

In the cartoon, Ash, a Pokemon trainer, attempts to collect magical
little creatures called Pokemons in an endless series of violent
contests. In the real world, kids collect Pokemon trading cards. TV4
appealed, and the Swedish Market Court in Stockholm ruled against the
station.

Despite the victory, the ombudsman's office expects it will keep busy.
"We're going to see more of this," says Swedish Deputy Consumer
Ombudsman Marianne Abyhammar, referring to cross-border broadcasts and
growing use of the Internet with a touch of resignation. "This is the
world we live in."

<-----article ends here------>

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Gary Ruskin | gary@essential.org
Commercial Alert | Congressional Accountability Project
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