Tobacco content still common on UK prime time TV, despite regulations

PA 172/18 - Tobacco content remains common on UK prime time TV, occurring in a third of all programmes, despite advertising and broadcasting regulations designed to protect children from this kind of exposure, a study led by The University of Nottingham has revealed. The amount of exposure has hardly changed in five years and is likely to heavily influence young people's take-up of smoking, according to the research which is published in the journal Tobacco Control . Tobacco content in film has been covered extensively, but relatively little attention has been paid to its inclusion on prime-time TV, despite the fact that children are likely to spend more time watching TV than they are films. The researchers, Dr Alex Barker and Professor John Britton in the University's Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, worked in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bath to analyse the tobacco content of all programmes, adverts, and trailers broadcast on the five national free to air TV channels between 1800 and 2200 hours during the course of three separate weeks in September, October, and November 2015. Pre-watershed coverage. Their analysis included any actual or implied use, such as holding a cigarette without smoking it, or making a comment about smoking; smoking/tobacco paraphernalia; and presence of branding in one-minute intervals. The results were then compared with those of a similar analysis carried out in 2010.