O'Brien, Kerry S. and Carr, Sherilene and Ferris, Jason and Room, Robin and Miller, Peter G. and Livingston, Michael and Kypri, Kypros and Lynott, Dermot (2015) Alcohol advertising in sport and non-sport TV in Australia, during children’s viewing times. PLoS ONE, 10 (8): e0134889. ISSN 1932-6203
OBrien_Carr_Lynott_etAl_2015_ChildrensExposureToAlcoholAdvertisingInTvSport.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (360kB)
Abstract
Objective: To Estimate the amount of alcohol advertising in sport vs. non-sport programming in Australian free-to-air TV and identify children’s viewing audience composition at different times of the day. Alcohol advertising and TV viewing audience data were purchased for free-to-air sport and non-sport TV in Australia for 2012. We counted alcohol advertisements in sport and non-sport TV in daytime (6am-8.29pm) and evening periods (8.30pm-11.59pm) and estimated viewing audiences for children and young adults (0–4 years, 5–13 years, 14–17 years, 18–29 years). During the daytime, most of the alcohol advertising (87%) was on sport TV. In the evening, most alcohol advertising (86%) was in non-sport TV. There was little difference in the mean number of children (0–17 years) viewing TV in the evening (N = 273,989), compared with the daytime (N = 235,233). In programs containing alcohol advertising, sport TV had a greater mean number of alcohol adverts per hour (mean 1.74, SD = 1.1) than non-sport TV (mean 1.35, SD = .94). Alcohol advertising during the daytime, when large numbers of children are watching TV, is predominantly in free-to-air sport TV. By permitting day-time advertising in sport programs and in any programs from 8.30pm when many children are still watching TV, current regulations are not protecting children from exposure to alcohol advertising.