And it doesn’t get much more auspicious than that.

If Product Placement has been included within a programme – the programme must display a ‘P’ on screen.  The “P” to mark the fact that cash has changed hands to get a can of coke – no lager thank-you and certainly not Full Fat Coke! - included prominently in a drama or even a documentary must be there for a full three seconds at the beginning of such a programme and at the end.

Blink and you could miss it.

Like many battles that have gone on for years (5 years they have been fighting) it won’t be long before we wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place – I predict the argument will last until Wednesday.

The Coke can won’t be shoved in our face, otherwise we will switch over. The sums of money going to the television companies will be modest but the liberalisation of the rules will at least help to boost revenues in difficult times.

Lets get Kev’s garage in Coronation Street to become a Bosch Car Service Centre!

But “P Day” has got more than one innovation going for it.  Ofcom, with a nice sense of timing and determination to make an occasion out of it, has also decreed that from Monday, for at least a year, television channels will be able to show longer advertising breaks in films and dramas.

In the experiment, which will probably become permanent, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 will be able to show up to 12 minutes of ads an hour instead of the current 7. (Digital Channels can show 12 minutes per hour in ALL programming already - but I bet you have already noticed that!) This could have dangerous consequences!!

Younger audiences whose attention spans are notoriously short might wander off. The more mature might forget what they were watching. Everyone might be encouraged to reach for their PVR’s to teach the channels a lesson by fast-forwarding the ads.

But again, after a years worth of inflation on TV, it could bring the cost of TV DOWN again. The Ofcom decision comes after the Lords Select Committee on Communications last week decided to move in the opposite direction, rather perversely recommending that advertising time should be cut.  They will be recommending ad time is reduced to 7 minutes an hour instead of the current 12 across ALL platforms.  This reduces supply – while demand is maintained – hence prices increase for advertisers.

This was apparently to “improve the viewer experience” and to harmonise the rules in time for the completion of analogue switch-off next year. Once again the law of unintended consequences strikes.

The viewer experience in this case could be “improved” by reducing the amount of money available for original production and by pushing some satellite channels to the wall.

It looks as if their Lordships have fallen for the oldest logical flaw in the laws of television – that all channels are somehow born equal. There is an unstated assumption in the minds of their Lordships and their talk of harmonisation on minutage that somehow ITV is the same as a small satellite channel such as The Underwater Basket Weaving Channel. They are not and never will be and the only similarity is that both involve moving pictures.

Lets hope the 12 minute rule wins – it will bring in more revenue (which the TV contractors will be obliged to sink at least 50% into new ‘original’ programming – thats the deal), keep the choice we have available and keep costs down for advertisers - but the worry is that we will all be up in arms that our viewing will have been seriously compromised by having an extra 5 minutes of ads in a clock hour.

I don’t know about you – but I have never noticed my viewing experience being ruined when I have been watching ‘Dave’

Ian James, Media Director, Birmingham

TGI recently showed that 99% of ALL video was watched on traditional television. That’s ALL video – including YouTube, virals, Hulu et al.

What’s more, viewing figures in general have risen 3.79% year-on-year since 2005 – especially amongst heavy internet users, ironically.

For creatives this is great news. It means that the greatest, most vivid, most impactful, most evocative medium is still open to us.

Personally, I don’t believe the 30-second TV spot is yesterday’s format. I believe that when it’s used to communicate clear product truths in a clear, compelling and creative way, it works better than any other. And it offers us the chance to bring ideas to life in a way no other can.

Just look at Apple’s beautifully simple work. Look at the Meerkat. Look at Cillit Bang (just joking).

On a smaller scale, our own work for Twycross Zoo has had a huge impact. Visitor numbers rose by 132%, Google search for the zoo went up by 131%. And it won a raft of creative awards too.

Next time you hear the death knell for TV, just look at the facts, then look at ads like Guiness’s Surfer – and don’t for one minute think it represents the end of an era.

Then came the age of the slogan. The likes of Drinka Pinta Milka Day, Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, Heineken refreshes the parts, Beanz Meanz Heinz, Go to work on a egg, This is the age of the train, The Wonders of Woolies etc.

Then came a kind of reformation or culture revolution. A new breed of ad agencies found everything about these campaigns irredeemably naff. They started to create campaigns for which PhD in post-modern deconstructionism was required to discover exactly what was being advertised.

The American journalist and wit, H L Mencken, famously observed that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public. Today Messrs Murdoch, Desmond and others are proving him right. The Sun and News of the World are extremely popular whilst the Times and Sunday Times are not. The Daily Star is the only UK daily to be growing significantly. Jilly Cooper outsells Salman Rushdie in spades. Millions more people watch Big Brother than Simon Schama on TV. More people like a story with a beginning, middle and an end, than the puzzling mind games so beloved of the critics.

The new wave of ad agencies in contrast, intellectualizes the business, turning Mencken’s dictum on its head. Their watchwords might as well be legal, decent, honest and obscure. The beautifully crafted works of art which sometimes masquerade as advertising risk going so far over the heads of their audiences that they could come to the attention of the President’s Star Wars shield.