Seen any good plugs lately?
Only have actors on chat shows when they’re unemployed, Milton Shulman accidentally argues
NO ONE expects logic or consistency from TV executives. The medium has always been a jungle of anomalies, paradoxes, non sequiturs and ad hoc decisions.
But television’s approach to advertising would, by comparison, make the adventures of Alice in Wonderland sound like an exercise in pure reason.
The precise answer to a question like how long is a piece of string is no more elusive than trying to determine when an advertisement is not an advertisement.
Thus the commercial channel was prevented by the ITA from televising the International Trophy motor rave from Silverstone because the cars carried advertisements. Since the natural scenery for this type of event has always been hoardings and banners carrying every conceivable type of advertisement, who would be offended or corrupted by small advertisements on bonnets of cars travelling at 100 mph – would they emerge as more than a blur? — certainly escapes me.
Making this decision even more incomprehensible is the fact that the day following the ban, I watched on the commercial channel highlights of a football match between West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City where hoardings, proclaiming the delights of White Horse Whisky, Esso, BOAC, Haig Whisky, Coca-Cola and others, competed directly for my attention with the cavorting players.
Surely, then, the ITA should, if only to save itself from the charge of being ridiculous, reveal to us the subtle, perhaps Jeusitical reasoning that has enabled it to distinguish between these two forms of unpaid TV advertising.
The dilemma, of course, arising from the wording of the Television Act, which clearly states that “advertisements must be clearly distinguishable as such and recognisably separate from the rest of the programme.”
This simple cannot be done with sports programmes, and the ITA should obviously stop trying to split semantic hairs in their efforts to prove one form of outdoor display advertising acceptable and another beyond the pale.
If the ITV truly wants to discourage this type of advertising, they might consider adjusting their fees in relationship to the number of hoarding and banners likely to be caught by their cameras. The more advertisements of this nature the promoter has accepted, the smaller should be the fee the TV companies pay him. This sort of rough justice could be effective.
But even a more flagrant form of free advertising that occurs on all three channels is the plug for films, plays or books dropped casually, and not so casually, into light entertainment and discussion programmes.
On the Eamonn Andrews Show recently I saw Mrs Gretchen Wyler, whose main interest, judged from its appearance, was a passion for animals — she didn’t say much about animals — but we heard a good deal about the fact that she was taking over from Juliet Browse as the lead in Sweet Charity.
Similarly, Clint Eastwood, although he had appeared in many violent films, displayed only a repertoire of cliches on the subject of violence which he was presumably there to discuss. Why then was he chosen? I can only assume because he happened to be making a film called Where Eagles Dare, in England.
But BBC-1, in its present slide towards mediocrity, has recently been providing two of the most blatant plug-infested programmes on the small screen:
DEE TIME, presided over by Simon Dee, has become a rich hunting ground for public relations men every where.
On this programme, conversation takes almost second place to free advertising for whatever the guests are involved in.
A few weeks ago three peers of the land were shamelessly boasting about the delights of their stately homes during a discussion that was presumably meant to be about the new image of the aristocracy.
They giggled about the attractions they were offering to the public; they boasted about their takings; they vied with each other about the relative merits of their stately products.
A few moments later Donald Sinden and Bernard Cribbins turned up to tell us they were in a new play in Birmingham.
Except for telling us that girls take their clothes off in the play, that a Miss World was in it and that Simon Dee should say something more about the play, I cannot recall a single contribution either Mr. Sinden or Mr. Cribbins made to the show.
Faced with this avalanche of free advertising, all Simon Dee could say was: “Gosh, there’s so many people I gotta give plugs to!”
The newest recruit to this who’s-for-plugs type of programme is the BBC’s A Spoonful of Sugar. Because it proclaims to be a programme to brighten up the lives of people confined in hospitals, it naturally makes it a somewhat ticklish programme to criticise.
Stephen Potter, in his book Lifemanship, noted that the way to avoid bad notices for a book was to dedicate it “To Phyllis, in the hope that one day God’s glorious gift of sight may be restored to her.” To attack a book with such a dedication would always hold up the critics to a charge of bad taste.
But the fact that A Spoonful of Sugar is concerned with the blind, paraplegics, bedridden nonagenarians cannot deter me from describing it as one of the most embarrassing, ill-prepared, squirm-making programmes I have seen for many years.
There is something basically cheap about using handicapped people – eager to be friendly and cooperative to those who are presumably trying to be charitable to them —to plug actors, BBC’ shows, comedians and even hairdressers as this show does.
To watch Keith Macklin or Sheila Tracy trying to get the poor victim to admit some interest in the personality that waits, beaming and smiling, behind some hospital door is a teeth-grinding experience.
I don’t really believe that these occasions, with the inevitable paraphernalia of cameras, sound equipment, crews and wires that must by crammed into a hospital room, can be anything but a depressing, somewhat nerve-wracking experience for those poor patients, chosen for this spot of limelight.
The let-down, the anticlimax, when all the reporters and performers and technicians have gone must be in some cases most depressing.
I am all for entertainers devoting all the time they can to cheering up those less fortunate and restricted in life.
But they should do it quietly, personally and away from the glare and mechanics of the techniques of plugging. Otherwise their motives are bound to be misunderstood or suspect.
