UK Indian Channel Star Plus Illegal Advertising?

This post is going to be another one of my “rants” but it’s probably one that annoys me quite a lot. When watching a usual half hour long television programme on a channel which is privately owned, the adverts usually follow this structure:

  • programme starts (00 mins)
  • commercial break (12 mins)
  • programme continues (15 mins)
  • programme ends (27 mins)
  • commercial break
  • next programme starts (00 mins)
(XX mins) are the number of minutes into the programme.

Unfortunately, the Indian soap channel, Star Plus, has another advert structure which is quite annoying and this is as follows:

  • programme starts (00 mins)
  • commercial break (05 mins)
  • programme continues (10 mins)
  • commercial break (14 mins)
  • programme continues (19 mins)
  • programme ends (30 mins)
  • next programme starts (00 mins)

These are the times I recorded when I once watched an episode of the all women show, Saathiya. So as you can see a viewer has to watch 9 minutes of adverts in the the first 19 minutes of the programme. This is obviously good for those companies who are advertising as it is more affective for them however as this is a paid channel so revenue for star plus is not all earned by advertising. The worst thing about the adverts is that it predominantly consists of two companies playing the same advert twice: Southall Travel, Claim Time Solicitors. They do play other adverts but those are the main two which I pretty much know the words to.

The next thing which is annoying is the gap between the current programme and the next programme – there isn’t any! There aren’t even any credits. It literally jumps from one programme to the next without any obvious gaps in between. This is where the second set of adverts should be in all honesty as people might not want to watch it and get ready to watch another programme on another channel such as Eastenders after Saathiya. I have heard of cases where sometimes viewers think they are watching the same programme because of their being no gap between the programmes and it takes around 5 minutes for them to realise that they are watching a different programme. As funny as that is, which it is hilarious, it can ruin the mood a viewer would take into viewing the next episode of the programme they wanted to watch.

Judging by Ofcom’s code of scheduling of television advertising who are the regulator of communications in UK, what Star Plus are doing is a exploiting a loop hole in this code to what should be deemed illegal. As viewers, these unnatural breaks during the programmes makes it rather difficult to watch and it seems as though the channel is out there to make more money over actually providing entertainment for the viewers. Should a good number of people see this as unfair then it would be something worth making apparent to Ofcom who would investigate.


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5 responses to “UK Indian Channel Star Plus Illegal Advertising?”

  1. Paul c avatar
    Paul c

    This seems familiar to the way US television operates, which I tend to find a little annoying at times depending on the type of program I am watching. You’ll definitely catch a couple of occurrences of this on some American channels.

  2. Yzabel avatar
    Yzabel

    Ive been watching this star plus drama on this indian channel. It is rubbished. The drama just go round the clock and stuck on just one situation and theuve been talking and showing for the whole month which made me bored. They dont have new dramas atleast change topics every week. Such an annoying story lines and one more thing. Advertisement is more than the show itself. Of course its quiet obvious Whoever owns this channel made people fool and taking advantage of everyones money. Paying to watch this channels is not worth it.

  3. Sammi avatar
    Sammi

    I watch a lot of dramas on Star Plus, and even though there is more advertisement than drama, there is a new topic for every drama five days a week. A drama is shown, then repeated throughout the night and the next day, until the evening, when the same drama progresses and the story line continues. I don’t understand why people say that the story lines don’t change. If you don’t follow the drama and the times it is shown, then obviously you are just watching the repeats.

    However I do agree that the story lines aren’t as dramatic as English ones. I think that this is because they want to make the dramas family-friendly, and keep Indian traditions alive through them. Despite how westernised India is today, and how modern they are, when somebody switches an Indian channel on, they want to get a sense of the culture and the traditions followed. I disagree that this channel is not worth paying to watch, because I have learnt so much from it. Culture, religion, traditions and even language have all been improved in my mind.

    1. Raj Chevli avatar

      That’s rather interesting Sammi – Thank you for the comment.

      The original post was simply to highlight the fact that the adverts on Star Plus UK are annoying, excessive and frequent and since we live in a country that have rules and regulations about how adverts should be, Star Plus has clearly tried to make the most out of the system. With the Star Plus also receiving subscription fees as well as advertisement fee’s they should surely make enough money to keep the channel running without trying to generate money from showing lots of the same adverts (which is our time being wasted). I’d think that they would still make money if the channel was free based on the adverts.

      With regards to the content of the programme shown on Star Plus UK, that is quite debatable. I think that there are some positives as well as negatives and for me the negatives outweigh the positives which is why I’d avoid watching where possible. I don’t want to go into detail but I think that would be another blog post of its own.

      I must say that it is a step in the right direction making the channel HD!

  4. Nad avatar
    Nad

    I agree with all said, the claim adverts are very irritating and it seems as though these companies are fishing for fraudulent claims.

    I say this because why would need to advertise such a service that would only be relevant to a very small minority?

    Surely advertising soap powder is more relevant?

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