Television Without Political Ads

In America it is said that political commercials promote democracy. In the United Kingdom they say democracy is served by banning the political ads on radio and televisio

American listeners and viewers will be bombarded with political commercials in the months leading to the November 4 Presidential and Congressional elections.

Politicians and their supporters will spend millions of dollars producing ads to boast about themselves, stretch the truth, twist the truth and attack each other. Some will make us laugh and say "Yeah, go get’em." Many will anger us. Most of them will just bore us.

On November 5, we’ll find that nearly half of them were a waste of millions of dollars because their candidates will have lost.

But, Americans will tell themselves the commercials are just the price of democracy. All that baloney, all those spots, all that muckraking, all that wasted money and all that annoyance is the price of separating real leaders from losers. It’s the democratic process at work.

In Britain, they see it just the opposite way. Because of broadcasting’s impact, they view political commercials as potentially dangerous and they worry that the guys with the most money can create an uneven playing field. So they don’t allow any political ads on radio or television. They just allot each party a certain amout of time to state their cases. The ban on commercials is considered essential to preserving the democratic process.

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Ban on Political Commercials