Up: Martin Poulter > Scientology Criticism > UK Media Archive

(News item about Scientology adverts on BBC World)

Private Eye, 28 May 1999, p. 11

From chriso@lutefisk.demon.co.uk Wed Jun  2 20:11:03 BST 1999

FOLLOWING Record losses, controllers of BBC television's international news service, the almost viewer-free BBC World, have had to drop the only advert to appear since the channel's ill-conceived launch eight years ago.

Desperate for cash, Aunty's commercial arm BBC Worldwide had scraped the gutter and come up with a deal to plug "the New York Times best seller and publishing sensation"... L. Ron Hubbard's classic What Is Scientology?

Questions are being asked about what brilliant mind decided the champion of dianetics was suitable for a supposedly serious news channel broadcasting around the world. But the ad did at least prove that BBC World has some viewers (they mostly called to complain).

This embarrassing episode could not have come at a worse time for the sinking ship. BBC news supremo Tony Hall came out of hiding a few days ago (following the death threat to him from a crazed Serb who claimed to have killed Jill Dando) to reject the channel's own ludicrous five-year survival plan. The channel is now awash with rumours of a merger with the equally diabolical BBC News 24.

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