50 signatures reached
To: Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP
Commercial TV companies must pay public sector organisations for their involvement in documentaries
Any commercial television company using footage including fly on the wall documentaries, TV series or other programmes concerning the emergency services, e.g. NHS, Police, Fire Service and other public sector organisations, must make an agreed and legally binding policy to donate a percentage of all profits to be contributed as a donation to the heads of the services involved.
Why is this important?
The commercial TV companies have it made, no studio, no actors/actresses, low overheads etc.
It is frustrating that the public are having to fundraise for the NHS when there is an obvious pot of money which can be gained from a small change in the law.
These services are overstretched, the staff are overworked and they are struggling with a lack of funding. Please remember that we the national insurance and tax payers are paying for the services above that commercial TV programmes are being made out of, with the commercial TV companies for far too long being allowed to make such huge profits out of national insurance and tax payer funded services.
EVIDENCE/RESEARCH
THE INFORMATION BELOW HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR YEARS AND SIMILARLY IS STILL GOING ON TODAY, (Investigation over the period of one week sat 6th January- Friday 12th January 2018 more than 103 hours of TV footage was shown of the police over various commercial Freeview channels, and over 29 hours of footage featuring the NHS. This equated to over 24 hours of advertising revenue (YES ADVERTS!) during the police programmes and over 6.7 hours of advertising (YES ADVERTS!) during the NHS programmes).
This is a typical example of just one week of the year, and similar will be happening every week which would equate to 1257.7 hours of advertising (YES ADVERTS!) during police programmes and 351.8 hours of advertising (YES ADVERTS!) during the NHS programmes per year.
As you can see the amount of advertising (YES ADVERTS!) revenue the emergency services could be taking advantage of is huge, even if they only had a small percentage of the profits from advertising alone it would make a huge contribution towards their funding. I.E.
NHS
Additional income for more NHS staff & Equipment
Additional income to be able to pay for free car parking for staff & visitors
POLICE
Additional income to be able to pay for extra police officers (policemen on the beat)
Additional income to fund local donations to good causes
