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TVTimes: Saturday 24 September 55 The Schedules Archive

A nice, 1950s-style description of the life of a housewife's life.  Whilst this would seem to be an early example of a 'woman's programme', the exact same description could be applied to a programme the following morning, The Joy of cooking:  Joy Shelton poses for Picture Post in 1955"Shopping with Elizabeth Allen" - the difference being that the latter was an Ad Mag.

Aware of the costs involved in producing advertisements to fill 'natural breaks', the ITA allowed contractors to produce their own narrative pieces where advertisers paid for their products to be shown.  This was a benefit for small advertisers, who could afford 30 seconds of Ms Allen talking about their product, but not a 30-second spot commercial. 

Now familiar from endless hours of satellite home shopping channels, these Ad Mags were regarded with some suspicion in government at the time, being within in the bounds of the Television Act but against the spirit.  Nevertheless, it took almost a decade before they were banned by act of parliament.

 

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