Russian TV stations face the prospect of reducing or even abandoning their commercial breaks if they continue to use product placement.
Kommersant reports that the Office of Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has confirmed that product placement should be taken into account in ten nine minutes per hour broadcasters are allowed to allocate for commercials.
It appears that the FAS is considering a crackdown on product placement, which it began to punish some time ago with, for instance, a R40,000 (€1,030) fine on Channel One, the country’s leading station, for a programme it showed in 2003.
The latest target appears to be TNT, which has allegedly violated several provisions of Article 14 of the law ‘On Advertising’.
