If the AV referendum campaigns can't grab attention during this quiet week then they are never going to. Tonight, the TV war begins with No to AV first up with this effort featuring Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard, a jockey and a school teacher. These are the three short films which make up the prime-time broadcast to get the public involved. The YES! to Fairer Votes campaign get their chance tomorrow.
The No to AV broadcast will be shown on BBC1 at 18.55 this evening, on ITV1 at 18.50, on Channel 4 at 19.55 and Channel 5 at 19.25
What do you think? I don't understand why three short films rather than one longer theme was preferable. They have their naff moments, the man wearing the backwards cap-wearing in the final film being the low point for me. But No to AV have spotted that referendum campaigns elsewhere are successfully run on negative messages.
In the current issue of Total Politics, you will find this article from a veteran of Californian referendums on what single-issue campaigns need to do to win.
Comments
Mark / April 11 2011 7:09pm
The 'no' ad said everything about the 'no' advocates attitude towards the electorate. AV isn't complicated, but they believe that we are too stupid to understand. Best we just mind our own business, keep our nose out of politics and what politicians are up to and just show up every 5 years to give power to another load of imbeciles who don't think they should answer to us!
Jonathan Raymond / April 11 2011 7:17pm
I can't believe the networks are agreeing to broadcast this obvious bullwaste, they deliberately try to make AV sound as confusing as possible with the most muddled explanation ever. There were no real arguments in there, just a whole dump of negativity :/
L D Kelly / April 11 2011 8:00pm
I am a supporter of the NO campaign but I thought tonight's broadcast did the campaign no services at all. Instead of using celebrities in a non-productive manner, can we please have the arguments presented in a civilised fashion?
sc / April 12 2011 8:30am
The broadcast was awful. No facts just low brow nonsense.
Caspian / April 12 2011 11:44am
All their argumemts were made around the assumption that av leads to coalition goverments, but if we had av over the last 30 years the only hung parliment was in 2010 when fptp gave us one as well.
The Public wont accept these blatent misinterpretation of the truth