WHEN THE GOVERNMENT was putting through the TV Act it
made special provision for documentary 'shoppers' guides' to be included as programmes, rather than as advertising. The reasoning was that the producer of a shoppers' guide might want, in his programme, to discuss the merits of different varieties of, say, blankets, or cheese, or refrigera- tors; and it would be unfair if his recommenda- tions were classed as 'commercials.' This was a sensible provision; but in a remarkably short space of time it had been given a very different interpre- tation. Far from being documentaries, as the original intention was, 'shoppers' guides' became simple advertising bait; any advertiser could have his goods plugged on them, for payment of a fee. Sir Robert Fraser's latest letter to The Times on the subject, in which he tries to pretend that adver- tising magazines were catered for from the start, is consequently misleading. So is his other argu- ment—that the promoters of the Act deliberately left its advertising provisions flexible. True—but what Sir Robert omits to mention is that they left it flexible to make it easier to administer : not to enable the contracting companies to twist the Act into shapes that were not contemplated by MPs when they debated the TV Bill.
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