Five Things You Can't Do On British Television

I grew up in the era of linear

television

, when most people in Britain could only choose between four or

five

channels and when much of the country watched the same programs at the same time. And when a medium has so much power, it is heavily regulated. Some of those regulations are sensible and others sound a little strange if you've never heard of them before. I don't include

things

that break other laws, or anything vague like "causing offence", which is true basically everywhere, just with a different definition of what "crime" means. These are

things

that you can post on YouTube, that you could well broadcast in other countries around the world, but that you can't do on British

television

.

Any stage hypnosis demonstration must be licensed: and that remains true. The fine for stage hypnosis without a license can be £1,000. City councils still regulate this. Because in the '50s, that was a concern. Hypnosis was a little scary. To the point where there was a glut of low-budget horror movies about hypnotic possession. So stage hypnosis was authorized and television hypnosis was prohibited. Today, that regulation doesn't exist because they're worried about some evil hypnotist taking over the world via television, although that was a plot point in the terrifying '90s children's show The Demon Headmaster. Although let's just say the child actors have gotten a little better direction since then. "I don't understand it.

I really don't understand it." But better safe than sorry. If you broadcast a hypnotic induction to millions of people, then chances are someone will believe that it has caused them some harm. Except. You can get away with it if you're careful. In 2009, illusionist Derren Brown performed a trick in which he performed a "subliminal movie" that he claimed would make some of the people watching feel like they were glued to his chair. He also said: "The film is not effective at a lower resolution, "so if it is posted on the internet it won't work." Which is ridiculous.

Anyway, British television was low bitrate standard definition digital by then. Those are lies. But they are lies of a magician, so they are part of the show "...find yourself trapped, blocked, stuck, gelled, cemented, united, fused..." That is a hypnotic induction technique. textbook. I mean, I literally went through a hypnosis textbook. And there's almost two minutes, complete with slow eye contact zoom! But he didn't say it was hypnosis. He never claimed to be hypnotizing people! and some wavy lines and there were only

five

complaints about it to the regulator, which did not investigate. But officially and legally you cannot try to hypnotize people over the air.

There is a list of sporting events, defined by Parliament, that must be. available on open television. This dates back to 1996, when pay TV channels, satellite and cable, were becoming popular in Britain. Those services had a lot of money and could, in theory, outbid free-to-air channels for things like the Olympics, Wimbledon, football and rugby cup finals and, um, some horse racing. So Parliament passed a law: pay-TV services cannot broadcast any of them unless the rights are also available at a fair price to free-to-air channels. Although it also works the other way around. Free-to-air channels can't secure exclusive rights either, because that would be unfair to payouts... look, it's complicated and messy, and there are all kinds of rules to try to establish some kind of level of play. field while ensuring that the World Cup final is not broadcast on PPV.

By the way, while researching this I discovered that other European countries have a similar list of events and there are some wonderful national stereotypes in there. Austria: Nordic World Ski Championships. Finland: Ice Hockey World Championship. And Ireland: the hurling final. This all makes sense. Governments don't want events of national cultural importance, and those sporting events are that, they don't want them to become irrelevant because they are only available to people who can pay. This is not in the modern sense of fake news, although the regulations say that here too the information must be neutral, but fake news in the sense of War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

You can't risk someone changing the channel just to get to your fictional news story and think some disaster has happened. You can see this in action in Crisis Command, a brilliant, ahead-of-its-time show from 2004 where three people are asked to confront a fictional crisis as if they were government ministers. The story unfolds through fictional news broadcasts using real BBC reporters and real BBC newsrooms. "Britain is under attack." To get around the rule, the footage is always shown in context. Never full screen. There is always someone else in the frame or sometimes walking through the shot. And the same thing happens in dramatic shows.

News about the end of the world must always be in context. As far as I know, no one is trying to solve this problem lately. The last time I knew, or at least the last time something like this happened, was the now legendary Ghostwatch, on Halloween night 1992. It was purported to be a live ghost investigation organized by genuinely trustworthy real-life people. presenters and of course: It Goes Wrong Now, it was presented in context: "Screen one presents an unusual and sometimes disturbing film..." - but if you missed that context, well, it was a clever show. He knew how to use and abuse the medium and he scared quite a few people.

And he influenced a generation of writers and producers. Although technically it is not new. Given the tabloid fury afterwards, no one has done anything similar since, although after almost 30 years we're probably close to someone trying it. There are exemptions for channels with low budgets and small audience shares and for stations that are just starting out, but even from day one, at an absolute minimum, 10% of a channel's production must have subtitles as an option. Once the channel is established, that increases to 80%. Additionally, 10% must have optional audio description. 5% must have sign language, even if added in a nightly repeat.

Accessibility should be a legal right and duty, and channels are sometimes criticized for forgetting this. Controversial opinion: This should also apply to YouTube. Not for small channels that are just starting out, but I think if you have the kind of YouTube channel that spends, let's say, a decent amount of money or a decent amount of time on... it's like two dollars a minute at most. , or just a little of your time: "Look at me, I bought a Lamborghini!" Buy some damn subtitles. Plus...I could make a whole video on advertising law and product placement. I still intend to do it at some point, I've been promising for years.

But I do want to highlight just one specific rule: 12 minutes per hour. The maximum number of ads allowed on all UK channels. For some of the older channels it's even less, seven or eight minutes per hour. And that is. There are a few other rules about how far apart commercial breaks can be from each other and how long they can be and occasional small loopholes for odd circumstances, but the big number is: 12 minutes per hour max. And that's not a total moving average. That's hourly on the clock, meaning channels will change their programming by a couple of minutes to accommodate.

If there is a less popular show right before a primetime ratings grabber, that less popular show may not have ads in between. absolutely. Sure, they might still take a break and show a couple of trailers from their own channel that don't count toward that big watch moment, but the programmers will make sure there's as much advertising as possible right before the show starts. hour, right before the big show, and then right after the end of the next hour. There's an art to fitting all that in and out of all these rules, this is the one thing you can't get away with.

The regulator checks it. They will realize it and many channels have been opened in this regard. But there was one thing I did notice while researching this. There's another line in those rules that says commercial breaks must be done in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of the show. I explicitly rule out the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire gimmick where someone just chose his answer, and it's all dramatic, and the host says... "It's time for a break." It is very clear that this is not allowed. There is no other way to read that sentence.

But the show's hosts have been doing that for 20 years and have never been called upon to do it. Apparently there are some rules where entertainment can come first.