TELEVISION ADVERTISING REGULATION AND PROGRAMME QUALITY

Abstract

In many countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom, there are regulations that limit the amount of advertising content per hour of television broadcasts. This paper examines the effect this regulation has on programme quality and viewer welfare. It is shown that regulation reduces programme quality and that its effect on viewer welfare is ambiguous. In some circumstances, fostering competition can both reduce the number of advertisements per unit of time and increase programme quality. This unambiguously increases viewer welfare. Therefore, depending on the parameters of the model, fostering competition may be preferable to regulating the amount of advertisements per unit of time.