I would just like to take a moment here to thank and congratulate Southern Cross Ten here in Canberra who saw fit to run an unpaid community service ad for the Guide Dogs as part of an otherwise full ad break during one of their highest rating programs, Thank God You’re Here.
I suppose it is entirely possible that they just didn’t manage to sell that spot, in which case they could easily have run any of the standby generic commercials they would have had available, but they decided to run a community service ad, for which they should be congratulated.
Why am I making a big fuss over one 30 second commercial? Quite simply because I am sick to death of seeing virtually every community service ad dumped in a set of ad breaks after between 11pm and Midnight when most of the audience have switched off but it’s too early to run the adult services commercials. Admittedly each spot can be worth hundreds of dollars (I recall doing some research on this a couple years back and was quoted $500 per 30 seconds during MacLeods Daughters) and it is therefore costly to sacrifice a spot to a non-paying organisation, however it is the right thing to do.
For this reason I congratulate Southern Cross Ten Canberra. Very well done.
Samuel