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Research paper
Content analysis of tobacco content in UK television
  1. Alexander B Barker1,
  2. Kathy Whittamore1,
  3. John Britton1,
  4. Jo Cranwell2
  1. 1 Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  2. 2 Tobacco Control Research Group, Department for Health, University of Bath, 1 W 5.124, Claverton Down, Bath, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Alexander B Barker, Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG5 1PB, UK; alexander.barker{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Abstract

Aims Exposure to audiovisual tobacco content in media is a risk factor for smoking in young people. While tobacco content in films has been extensively documented, content in mainstream television has received relatively little attention. We report an analysis of tobacco content in a sample of UK free-to-air prime-time television broadcasts in 2015, and compare this with a similar analysis from 2010.

Design Content analysis of all programmes and advertisements or trailers broadcast on the five national UK free-to-air channels in the UK between 18:00 and 22:00 during three separate weeks in September, October and November 2015.

Setting Great Britain.

Participants None (media analysis only).

Measurements Occurrence of any tobacco, tobacco use, implied use, other tobacco reference/related objects and branding in every 1 min coding interval.

Findings Tobacco content occurred in 33% of all programmes and 8% of all adverts or programme trailer breaks. Actual tobacco use occurred in 12% of all programmes broadcast. Tobacco-related objects, primarily no smoking signs, occurred in 2% of broadcasts; implied tobacco use and tobacco branding were also rare. The majority of tobacco content occurred after the 21:00 watershed.

Conclusions These findings are virtually unchanged from our earlier analysis of programme content from 2010. Audiovisual tobacco content remains common in UK television programmes.

  • media
  • advertising and promotion
  • prevention

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2018-054427

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors AB led coding of data, supported the analysis of data and contributed to drafting the initial manuscript. KW contributed to coding of data. JC contributed to the analysis of data and drafting the manuscript. JB contributed to drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number MR/K023195/1] and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, with core funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council and the Department of Health under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

    • Disclaimer The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement Data are available from the authors on request.