Sharmila Tagore's intriguing argument that there’s no moral equivalence between advertising flavoured and un-flavoured condoms — she has found a TV ad on flavoured condoms unsuitable for daytime broadcast — provided an appropriate context for something I have wanted to say on television commercials: too many people say too many things about TV ads. More than a few share the Censor Board chairperson’s partiality to perplexing censoriousness over the quality of TV ads. Many more take issue with quantity. The argument that “there are too many commercials” is only a little younger than television’s first commercial: aired on New York’s WNBT-TV on 1 July 1941. The first TV ad interrupted normal programming without any announcement from the TV station. Whatever you say about TV commercials, you can’t say matters haven’t improved.

The short point about “too many commercials” is that TV requires loads of money to run and ads bring in the money. There’s no getting away from this, unless you have access to technological solutions like TiVo (this gadget is hugely popular in America and it allows you, under certain conditions, to fast forward through commercials).

BBC, I would be reminded by many, runs without ads. The short answer to that is that the British public funds BBC through a TV tax. The important point is not that BBC should not accept ads but that if it does, it should not get public funding. BBC’s hugely popular website is planning to accept ads and the New York Times reported on October 30 that some BBC employees are most upset at this. Integrity and independence are apparently at stake. I am not so sure. And don’t say BBC’s programming is better than that on most ad-funded TV channels. That’s the fault of TV stations, not advertisers.

... contd.