Sponsored ITV cop show breaches rules

Broadcasting regulator Ofcom has said that the Home Office sponsorship of ITV1's Beat: Life on the Street documentary series about Police Community Support Officers breached the broadcasting code.

Two people complained to the regulator after reading press reports that the series was fully funded by the Home Office through a sponsorship deal arranged by the government's Central Office of Information.

Ofcom's broadcasting code requires sponsorship to be transparent and independent of the content and scheduling of a programme. Promotional mentions of the sponsor or its activities must be avoided and non-promotional references are allowed only when "editorially justified".

Channel TV, which acts as the compliance handler for the ITV network, said that production company TwoFour had "complete editorial independence over the series" and, other than a denied request for the programme to include a telephone number for people interested in becoming PCSOs to call, the Home Office was not involved in "discussions about potential programme content". The ITV licensee argued that PCSOs are not a "product" of the Home Office, that the programme "painted a full and honest picture" of PCSOs, and that the relationship with the COI was clear.

Ofcom agreed that the Home Office had not influenced the content of the programme but said that "overall, the series portrayed the PCSOs and the contribution they made to communities in a positive light" and further ruled that the "overriding" supportive "tone of the programmes" constituted promotional references, thus putting the programme in breach of the code. It also said that "the relationship between the sponsored programme and the Home Office’s role as its sponsor was... not made transparent to the audience".