BBC takes a shine to Sun ‘celebrity’
One of the principal attractions of cross-media ownership is cross-media promotion. The entire history of BSkyB in this country has been a history of non-stop praise of the channel by News International newspapers.
In turn, BSkyB has leaned heavily on Sun reporters and columnists for its nascent TV stars and has done much to promote the NI stable in one way or another.
For BSkyB and NI, this all makes plenty of sense, but one might ask why the BBC feels it ought to get involved.
For those of you who never watch the BBC’s National Lottery programme a celebrity is invited to start the machine that selects the numbers. On Saturday December 28 the so-called celebrity was Lennie Lottery, The Sun’s National Lottery correspondent who, inexplicably, was allowed to remind 15 million BBC viewers to get their Sun Lottery syndicate cards every week.
If Virginia Bottomley can call for an investigation into the prominent use of the Daily Mirror as a prop in Only Fools and Horses, perhaps there is a case for investigating
The Sun’s own walking product placement.