More regular audience indexing would have helped broadcaster avoid alcohol advertising to teenagers, says watchdog

The watchdog said that Channel Four Television Corporation (CFTC) had breached rules set out in the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising (BCAP Code) when it broadcast episodes of 'The Big Bang Theory' and 'How I Met Your Mother' on its E4 channels late in 2012 and earlier this year.

The ASA's compliance team had challenged whether adverts for alcoholic drinks scheduled between episodes of the programmes broadcast prior to the 9pm watershed were appropriate.

In two separate rulings, ASA said that both comedy programmes could have appealed to under 18s and that therefore CFTC ought to have carried out "audience indexing" so as to determine whether the shows were indeed "likely to appeal particularly" to such an audience.

Under the BCAP Code, broadcasters are required to "exercise responsible judgement" when scheduling advertisements and have internal systems in place "capable of identifying and avoiding unsuitable juxtapositions between advertising material and programmes, especially those that could distress or offend viewers or listeners".

Under the rules, the advertising of most alcoholic drinks alongside programmes commissioned for, principally targeted at, or likely to appeal to, audiences under the age of 18 is barred.

Guidance issued by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice states that no alcohol advertising should take place where 'audience indexing' reveals that children aged between 10 and 15 years old "are 20% over-represented in the programme audience compared to the audience as a whole" – a reading of more than 120 on the index, according to the ASA's adjudications.

'Audience indexing' is a tool that forecasts prospective audiences for programmes based on "historical data", ASA said. Although an index result that reveals children 10-15 years old are 20% over-represented is not automatically considered to indicate a breach of the BCAP Code, it is a test used to determine "whether the broadcaster used the predictive tools available to schedule advertising with reasonable thoroughness and care", it said.

CFTC said it usually carried out audience indexing for both shows quarterly and acted upon the results but that it had failed to follow this process in the instance of the episodes ASA reviewed.

ASA said, though, that even if CFTC had conducted quarterly reviews and acted on those results it would not have been enough for the broadcaster to claim compliance with the BCAP Code. More regular reviews of audience profiles are needed, it said.

"Even if the process was followed, a quarterly review period would not have been sufficient to comply with the Code," ASA said. "A quarterly review period could result in a situation where a programme consistently exceeded the 120 index for three months before action was taken, which should not be possible in a compliant forecasting process."

"We also considered that although the use of a monthly period to determine the series index for a particular time-slot could be a useful tool in the forecasting process, it may still result in unreasonable delays when responding to audience changes unless the data was looked at on a more regular basis," it said. "We considered the failure to monitor and act upon changes in audience indices resulted in the scheduling of alcohol ads in breach of the BCAP Code."