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BBC rapped on advertising

The BBC has received a stern rap on the knuckles over advertising its own product between programmes, we can exclusively reveal.

TV Watchdogs hauled the Corporation over the coals and warned that it must "get it sorted or face the consequences".

The right royal bollocking comes as a result for promotional activity surrounding the Beeb's new blockbuster series Hustle — shot at a cost of £16bn.

"We're very concerned as to how this programme has been promoted," a government spokesman told The Rockall Times. "It has cost an absolute fortune in licence payers' money and you wouldn't even know it was on."

The BBC has been advised to immediately address the fact that expensive series are not getting the exposure they deserve. Among the radical proposals is one suggesting that it consider cutting the running time of all its programming to 52 minutes, thereby making available 8 full minutes per hour which can be filled with relentless plugs for forthcoming attractions.

"Brilliant!" said one visibly-amazed BBC advertising operative. "First up, if the programmes were shorter, we wouldn't have to edit them for the commercial foreign market. Plus, we could then run back-to-back Hustle trailers for eight minutes each and every hour."

Warming to her subject, the Corporation minx continued: "And then imagine if you ran the same trailer simultaneously on BBC1 and 2 — there would be no escape and then you could plug other stuff as well like Freeview which no-one has heard of: I mean we could have a load of celebrities pulling their faces off which is really clever and then we could have John Simpson saying 'It's all available on Freeview, a new BBC package...' and we could run that over and over and over again until everyone had bought the set-top box and then we could go back to the Hustle trailers. Quick, get me Jenson Button on the phone he'd be brilliant for plugging BBCi..."

Despite our interviewee's enthusiasm for the proposal, the BBC issued the following official statement this morning: "We at the BBC have no intention of shortening our programming and then plugging the gaps with two or three endlessly-repeated trailers for our own output. Not only would this be an insult ot the intelligence of the licence payers, but would most likely affect uptake of Freeview, a new BBC package which is available on digital or through a set-top box which you can get for a one-off payment of around £80. Digital viewers can press the red button on their remote now for an interactive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the latest Hustle trailers."

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