Beyond Commercials: Television Program Sponsorship in France and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article deals with varieties of sponsorship, with regulation, with the number and types of programs sponsored on terrestrial television, and with the types of advertisers who sponsor them. In France, the 1980s were characterised by expansion and experimentation in sponsorship which outpaced regulation; by contrast, the first network program sponsorship in the United Kingdom was in 1989. The effect of the European legislation of 1989 was to tighten control in France and ease the regulatory framework in the United Kingdom. However, the perceived power of commercials and the strict regime imposed by the British ITC Code of Television Sponsorship, although further liberalised in 1997, continue to limit the penetration of sponsorship in the United Kingdom, Given that in 1995 only 2 per cent of television's advertising income in Britain, and 6 per cent in France, came from sponsorship, there is no evidence to date that sponsorship has had an adverse effect on program quality or diversity.