Television advertisements promoting pornography on cellphones have raised concerns, with the number of complaints received by the Advertising Standards Authority of SA (ASA) having increased “substantially”.
As a result, the ASA is calling on viewers to help it identify and curb inappropriate content on South African TV.
Dispute resolution consultant, Farzana Omar, says the body has experienced an “intermittent increase” in complaints relating to TV advertising for pornographic SMS services. “From the complaints, it appears that these commercials are broadcast exclusively on etv and are not always appropriately scheduled.”
The ASA says it can only carry out its mandate - to reactively consider the content of advertising - on a case-by-case scenario. “In this specific instance, we not only have to consider the actual content of the advertising, but also the surrounding programming.”
The principle, says the ASA, is that any person watching a movie rated, for example, “18 SNL” would not reasonably find advertising for pornographic services offensive or harmful, “because it presumably matches the content of the programming being watched”.
The ASA is calling on viewers to “lodge meaningful complaints and avoid unnecessary frustration”.
If “offensive advertising” does appear in programming that viewers do not regard as appropriate, the ASA calls on the public to provide it with the following information:
1. The time, date and channel where the advert was screened.
2. The programming/movie during which the advert was broadcast.
3. The keyword used for the SMS service (words like “Sex”, “XXX”, “Porn”, etc).
4. The SMS code required (usually a five-digit number) to which the keyword has to be sent.
The ASA says the proliferation of adverts of this nature, coupled with the quick succession in which they are often flighted, makes it difficult to source copies of the relevant advertising without the aforementioned information.
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