Text 3 Sweden Pushes Ban on Children’s Ads

When kids in Sweden watch the Pokemon cartoon series, they don’t hear the jingle that everywhere else in the world ends each show: “Gotta catch ’em all.” The country’s consumer ombudsman deemed it stealth advertising, ruling that the tune is a surreptitious plug for Pokemon playing cards.

That’s illegal on Swedish television. In fact, Stockholm has prohib­ited all TV advertising aimed at children under the age of 12 since 1991, so the ruling wasn’t all that radical. What alarms advertisers and broadcasters is that Sweden wants the rest of Europe to follow its lead.

Sweden’s Radio and TV Act has banned ads directed at kids from the first day that commercial television was allowed in the country on July 1, 1991. The ban was based on research that indicates children can’t fully distinguish between advertising and programming until about age 10.

Broadcasters argue that the revenue generated in the EU every year by TV ads for children's products – between 670 million euros and 1 billion euros – is essential for the creation of quality children's program­ming. European governments have been pushing television stations to pro­duce more of their own shows, to reduce the amount of American-made content that fills up TV schedules, but for-profit station owners say that without sufficient ad revenue, only fee-supported broadcasters will be able to even try to do so. (The Wall Street Journal, by Brandon Mitchener) [3]

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