Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Now its the Bloody Canadians sheesh

Canada bans Aussie ad campaign
Wednesday Mar 22 05:59 AEDT

No sooner than British censors cleared Australia's colourful tourism campaign, Canadian officials have banned it, but not because of the word "bloody".

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has refused to run the "Where The Bloody Hell Are You" ad during family television programming because of the word "hell," Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reports.

"It just shows you the different taste levels of audiences in various cultures," CBC spokeswoman Ruth Ellen Soles told the newspaper.

RELATED LINKS
VIDEO: In hot water over hell "'Hell' is a problem for us in terms of kids and family viewing. It comes under the category of 'taste' and in these situations we listen to what our audience tells us."

Tourism Australia last week submitted the commercials to the CBC and to Telecaster, which screens commercials before they appear on Canada's private broadcasters.

The CBC said the ad could run alongside most of its content, but not on two programs it characterised as "family" programming. It also would not be allowed in family Easter specials."We've also told the agency that we'll be monitoring audience reaction and if we get a significant number of complaints, we'll rethink running it," Soles told the Globe and Mail.

The head of Telecaster said that although it had approved the ads, it would flag them so individual broadcasters knew they contained objectionable language.

"Those are words that we would generally have problems with. They're on our list of bad words because we don't want kids picking up on that," said Jim Patterson, president and chief executive officer of the Television Bureau of Canada, which runs Telecaster.
Tourism Australia's Canada director Luke Jones said the adverts were likely to run there later this month or next.

British authorities allowed the advert to screen there at the weekend after Tourism Minister Fran Bailey flew over to persuade them to change their minds.

British television audiences will now be able to see the entire advertisement, which features Australia's top tourist attractions and ends with the tag line: "So where the bloody hell are you?".

The ad was pulled after Britain's Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) objected to use of the word "bloody".

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