Wishful Thinking or Hard Core Hostility? Viewers' Support for a Reduction in Television Advertising

While several studies have documented viewers' negative attitudes toward television advertising, and their desire to reduce the amount of advertising they see, none have examined support for practical options designed to achieve such a reduction. This study investigates whether television viewers' dislike of advertising was such that they would accept an increase in licence fees to achieve a decrease in the amount of advertising shown. Despite their overall negativity toward advertising, few viewers supported the options tested and support for less advertising declined sharply as the licence fee trade-off increased. This suggests that surveys which report a dislike of advertising, without exploring the extent to which respondents' attitudes align with their projected or actual behaviour, are naive. Nevertheless, the continuing antipathy of television viewers toward advertising should be of concern to both advertisers and television broadcasters.