Exposure to tobacco, alcohol and ‘Junk food’ content in reality TV programmes broadcast in the UK between August 2019 - 2020

Barker, AB ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4568-5114, Bal, J, Ruff, L and Murray, R, 2022. Exposure to tobacco, alcohol and ‘Junk food’ content in reality TV programmes broadcast in the UK between August 2019 - 2020. Journal of Public Health: fdac046. ISSN 1741-3842

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Abstract

Background: Exposure to alcohol, tobacco, and foods high in fat sugar or salt (HFSS) content in media is a risk factor for smoking, alcohol use, and HFSS consumption in young people. We report an analysis of tobacco, alcohol, and HFSS content in a sample of reality TV programmes broadcast on TV and video-on-demand (VOD) services throughout a one-year period.

Methods: We used 1-minute interval coding to quantify content in all episodes of 20 different reality TV programmes between August 2019 – August 2020 and estimated population exposure to a sample of these programmes using viewing data and UK population estimates.

Results: We coded 13,244 intervals from 264 episodes. Tobacco content appeared in 227 intervals (2%) across 43 episodes (2%), alcohol in 5167 intervals (39%) across 258 episodes (98%), and HFSS in 1752 intervals (13%) across 234 episodes (88%). A sample of 15 series delivered approximately 157.4 million tobacco, 3.5 billion alcohol, and 1.9 billion HFSS gross impressions to the UK population, including 24 thousand, 12.6 million and 21.4 million, to children respectively.

Conclusion: Tobacco, alcohol and HFSS content is common in reality TV programmes. These programmes deliver exposure to tobacco, alcohol, and HFSS imagery, representing a potential driver of tobacco use, alcohol use, and HFSS consumption in young people.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Public Health
Creators:	Barker, A.B., Bal, J., Ruff, L. and Murray, R.
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	5 May 2022
ISSN:	1741-3842
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1093/pubmed/fdac046 DOI 1533106 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Faculty of Public Health. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	30 Mar 2022 11:21
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2023 10:28
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/46005

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