Shot by LG to promote their new Hard Drive HDTV range the commercial was banned by both free to air and pay TV stations across Australia because it prompted consumers to "Snip" out TV commercials. To get the commercial to air LG Australia had to lay down a new voice track that made no reference to removing commercials.
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V Networks have banned an original LG "Tuna" commercial that told consumers how to eliminate TV commercials using a brand new plasma and LCD TV system that comes with a built in hard drive.SmartHouse tipped two weeks ago that the original commercial would be banned. Instead LG has been forced to modify the commercial to remove all reference to fact that the new LG TV's will allow consumers to remove instantly any TV commercials from up to 30 hours of recorded content.
The LG TV ad that consumers will see tomorrow night now includes the line: "And when you replay, you can skip straight back to the action." Originally the commercial that was shown to journalists at the launch of the new TV said "When you replay, you can skip the ads."
All commercial TV stations in Australia including Nine, Seven Ten and pay TV station Foxtel banned the commercial following discussions among all of them.
The move does not stop LG running the original TV commercial online or having the commercial posted to a YouTube or other online video site.
LG's marketing manager, Darren Goble told SmartHouse News that he hoped the TV stations did not ban the commercial. "We have a great product and yes it does remove TV commercials easily but so do several other devices".
TV stations in Australia are desperate to stop the introduction of any technology that allows content to be recorded. Recently Channel Nine owner PBL went to the extent of taking legal action against Australian Company Ice TV who has developed electronic program guide software that allows consumers to pre record TV programs onto DVD recorders, media centres and set top boxes and then remove the TV commercials.
PBL barristers in the NSW Federal Court have claimed that Ice TV are in breach of Australian copyright laws by identifying within the Ice TV software which TV programs are scheduled to go to air.
