I've come across another interesting tidbit in Hanzard, this time in a House of Commons debate. In 1959, Christopher Mayhew (Labour) begged to move an amendment to the Television Act 1954. The Act had enabled the creation of ITV, the first commercial television station on these isles. For the first time the British public was subjected to television ads, and people didn't particularly enjoy them.

Part of the problem was that ITV blatantly ignore certain restrictions. For instance, the second schedule of the Act (which is not available at legislation.gov.uk but can be found on Google books) states that advertisements shall not be inserted otherwise than at the beginning or the end of the programme or in natural breaks therein (page 502). ITV adopted a very broad definition of what constituted a "natural break" and Mayhew's amendment therefore aimed to confine ads to just the beginning and end of programmes.

From the picture Mayhew painted, watching ITV was as painful back then as it is today:

The intention of that Act and the intention of Parliament was perfectly clear, that advertisements would be allowed only in intervals which would have taken place anyhow, that is to say, between acts of a play, at half-time in football matches, between races at race meetings, and so on.

A natural break is one that would occur in any case, and an unnatural one is a break that is specially created to enable advertisements to be inserted. Anybody who switches on to I.T.V. can see that the intention of Parliament and the intention of the Act is being violated over and over again, night after night.

Breaks are being specially made in programmes of almost every type: discussion programmes, science programmes, news programmes, children's programmes, half-hour plays, thrillers,"westerns" — all of them. Even in a film, often constructed purposely to create an atmosphere lasting from start to finish, artificial breaks may be made three, four, even five times. In quiz games, one actually gets interruptions between the introduction of the contestants and the asking of the first question.

It may be said that the only programmes not interrupted are religious programmes and the discussion programme entitled "Free Speech". One might say, I hope without irreverence, that television advertisers hold back only for the Lord God and for the Lord Boothby. I think that that just about sums it up.

I stumbled upon this while researching the Labour Party's view on advertising in the 1970s. The party was definitely critical of the advertising industry during this decade but I haven't been able to find much information. There are some academic articles that look relevant but they are all firmly locked behind ridiculously expensive paywalls. In any case, it's clear that at least some people in the Labour Party were already critical of advertising in the late 1950s.

One of the better-known critics was Francis Noel-Baker. He opposed Mayhew's amendment because he felt it didn't go far enough. He had been campaigning for an independent inquiry into advertising in all its aspects and wanted Mayhew to add that demand to his amendment. In his speech, he also noted that some people were so fed up with ads on ITV that hey had started using a mechanical suppressor:

There is growing evidence that the television viewing public is becoming extremely "fed up" with these commercials, not only with the timing of them, that is to say, the points at which they are inserted, but also, of course, with their content. I understand that there are now on the market mechanical devices which enable the viewer, by pressing a button, to suppress at least the sound of the commercial, being able to release it again when the programme resumes. It really is fantastic that the viewer should be obliged to go to the expense of acquiring a mechanical suppressor of this kind to achieve any sort of continuity in his television programmes.

He wasn't exaggerating. In the 1950s remote controls were marketed as devices that let you stop TV commercials from your easy chair (the slogan for a product called Blab-Off) and shut off long annoying commercials while the picture remains on the screen (the sales pitch for the Flash-Matic Tuning device).

Personally, I had no idea remote controls already existed in the 1950s. In the early 1980s we still had a black and white television at home, without a remote control. To my mind, the remote control is a thing from the late 1980s. But, I'm clearly wrong. According to Wikipedia, the first remote control for televisions dates from 1950. That one was still connected to the television via a wire, which I feel doesn't really count (I sometimes pressed buttons on the television using a long stick, which I also don't think of as a remote control). The first wireless remote control was invented in 1955. Though I should stop calling them "remote controls". I reckon the name "mechanical ad suppressor" is much more accurate.