Ad break’s bubble has burst

Published Monday 4 August 2008 at 17:20

In order to ‘protect the quality and integrity’ of television programmes, British writers - backed no less than the culture secretary - oppose any attempt to open the door to product placement in British commercial television (Leader, July 10, page 8).

Pardon me, but wasn’t it product placement that launched the first independent TV? Soap operas once ruled the airways, reigned over by a variety of daytime programmes, among which The Goldbergs, Emily Post’s etiquette chats, Mrs Reilly’s discussions of the uses of ‘Ivory Soap that Floats’, Ruth Turner’s washing talks on behalf of Chipso Flakes and Powders. While it was radio once, the sellers of household cleaners and cleansers and personal soaps are now the world’s biggest buyers of both writers and TV time.

Airwaves or voice advertising, in 1923 still in its infancy, was a novel way to help manufacturers sell soap, candles, margarine and cooking lard, while bringing stardom to its presenters. The pioneering radio station WEAF in New York had accepted a limited amount of promotional broadcasting. P&G had estimated that the female consumer could be approached via the broadcasting company’s 50,000 wirelesses and began by explaining how to use shortening to best advantage in a programme called Crisco Cooking Talks. Soon there was a Radio Homemaker’s Club - hosted by one Ida Bailey Allen.

Seven years on in 1929/30, NBC and CBS had formed radio networks. Proctor & Gamble were on the NBC and CBS radio waves with a variety of daytime programmes, among which the popular Sisters of the Skillet which featured Crisco in a cooking programme ranging to Helen Chase’s Beauty Forums for Camay.

But listeners, it transpired, liked radio to entertain, not instruct. Besides which, housewives preferred entertainment that involved recognisable characters, in particular a cartoon family of Ivory Soap devotees, the Jollycos, who appeared in the Sunday rotogravures (a photomechanical process by which pictures, typeset matters etc are printed from a copper cylinder). Could the Jollyco concept where every member of the family, as well as all their friends, used Ivory soap be extended from rotogravures to radio?

It was against this backdrop that P&G coupled advertising with entertainment, pioneering a new form of daytime show. The company-produced radio soap opera - the very first soap.

It started with a comic strip type of story with continuing action. Oxydol’s Puddle Family in which the first real queen of the soaps, Ma Perkins, was created, its spin-off Vic and Sade, a husband and wife comedy team who worked for Crisco and a little later, Pepper Young’s Family for Camay.

The sum of emotion plus entertainment plus sales promotion added up. Most of the soap stories programmes used the ongoing cliffhanger serial story techniques.

But while the airwaves entertained a large, established audience, dialogue alone left its target - the modern housewife - cold. Shifts from the rhetorical to the dramatic were needed. What better way to pass on their message than by film?

By 1909, industrial film corporations had entered the entertainment business and would, by the fifties, emerge as the world’s largest employers of theatrical talent.

One of the earliest moving pictures demonstrating the worth of product placement was made by the Black Maria company of America. It was entitled Washing the Baby, its purpose to show how a toilet preparation, gentle enough for baby’s precious skin and baby’s fine hair, could also help mother turn her daughters into beautiful young ladies - therefore eligible for the best of marriages. This was the forerunner of beauty pageants, including those promoted by Lux and, of course, A&F Pears.

To cut a very long and convoluted history short, filmed then televised versions of radio soaps followed. The Guiding Light for White Naphtha was one of those which went on to be televised and continues to be networked throughout the Americas and beyond. Others included the Search for Tomorrow serial.

With the advent in Britain in the fifties of independent TV, everything changed. Television at the time could not be relayed from zone to zone and every show had to be produced live - what producers irreverently nicknamed a ‘soap-off’ for its local broadcast. On radio, characters had been recognised by their voices and sets were left to imagination of listeners. Now actors had to resemble the characters they portrayed. Parts had to be learned for early TV advertising, as for any stage play. Products has to be demonstrated and props seen to work. What viewers saw on screen was exactly what was happening. Failure in product presentation and actors forgetting their lines could evoke a howl of laughter rather than sales. Small wonder that the advertising agencies deemed it wiser to commit soaps to films.

Movie and radio characters had no need to memorise their lines - films at this time could be easily taped and voice-overs simply read from a script in front of a microphone. With the assistance of a new breed of advertising agencies and brand managers, proven writers and famous film directors entered the new medium. Two-minute motion pictures - think Pearl and Dean - soon occupied a place among cinema advertising.

Independent TV followed suit, featuring short interruptions during television programmes in which several paid-for pre-recorded messages were screened, phasing out the need for product placement. Think Katy and the Oxo family commercial break. The wheel has turned full circle.

Because of the explosion in the number of channels available to viewers, and the consequent reduction in the number of consumers watching any particular programme, funding is inevitably being diluted. Meanwhile, the small screen commercial break struggles for life.

Smart writers can mitigate the potential loss of revenue and a consequent reduction in their earnings - Ofcom itself estimates product placement would garner £35 million over five years - by agreeing to incorporate product placement in their scripts.

The only issue is how to manage it.

Faith Hines

Old Court

Suffolk