Line #7 RepeatingAd/PublicServiceAnnouncement


1	Many broadcasters are required by the government to air a certain amount of {{public service announcement}}s each day. For television stations, this means that they have to find a way to fit them into their commercial breaks to meet the requirement. A common way to do so is by repeating certain public service announcements. Here are a few examples of this practice:
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3	* Since broadcasters often want to reserve more heavily populated timeslots for paying advertisers, these often end up in the middle of the night. Due to the small number of public service announcements that are provided, however, the same advertisement about how orphanages need more bodies shoveled into them will often appear back to back with itself ''through an entire commercial break''. This is twice as true with government-operated "public access" stations, where those [=PSAs=] can be the whole break, ''whether'' day or night.
4	* Following the 2011 earthquake-tsunami-meltdown in Japan, advertisers quickly pulled all their ads to avoid appearing crass during a national emergency. This left stations with nothing but a small handful of PSA messages to run during breaks, so all of eastern Japan ended up seeing the same half-dozen ads, all day long, for 2-3 weeks. Anyone there at the time now has them burned into their subconscious.
5	** Rather [[NightmareFuel distressingly]], one of these was a cheerful cartoon song about using "aisatsu", or greetings, to make the people in their neighborhood happy. Keep in mind that this was during the middle of a crisis where people weren't even sure if their neighbors were going to be ''alive'' or not.
6	** Perhaps the most-repeated of these was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6No3wVkd0WY this PSA]] about how the words you say to others can impact them.
7	** This wasn't the first time this had happened. [=PSAs=] only aired for at least a week following the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995.
8	* When they weren't showing an in-house "Cool Message for Kids" PSA or the Arbor Day Foundation PSA mentioned below, Creator/FoxKids would show [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=MN46Foe-DHA this McGruff the Crime Dog PSA]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0V80KXHXFY this Dudley the Dinosaur PSA]] or [[https://vimeo.com/23111919 The Crayon Box That Talked]] at the end of their commercial breaks throughout its run. This practice lasted until the 2006-07 TV season.
9	** In 2006, Fox always played a PSA for The Foundation for a Better Life featuring "Beautiful" by Music/ChristinaAguilera during its Saturday morning shows. The PSA features a teenage girl trying to sit with popular girls in the cafeteria in a similar manner to ''Film/MeanGirls.''
10	* 99% of the time one of the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opcz9NVG7U8 AdCouncil shampoo bottle recycling PSAs ads pops up,]] the [[https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7eTt/ad-council-recycling other version]] will play immediately afterwards. The only real difference is the gender targeted by each advertisement and that one bottle becomes a comb while the other becomes a hairbrush. This mostly occurs on broadcast television, but cable channels like Nickelodeon will see them often enough.
11	* This practice is common on channels that only run {{public service announcement}}s and promos as ads, such as Creator/AmericanForcesNetwork and Cablevision's now-defunct public access channel. On the ''AFN Kids'' block of the former channel in 2001, the average ad break would always have ''Eddie the Eagle'' and ''Smokey Bear'' [=PSAs=], mixed in with other ads, during every commercial break, and the latter would always show ads for the Shelter Pet Project and Feeding America during every commercial break.
12	** Another common AFN PSA was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMKNtc4RJHc Gofer Cakes]], which was so common that it played on the network into 2010, long after the mainland had stopped running the PSA. A local example of this would be [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpOb_qSggGE this recycling PSA]] from the Okinawa AFN affiliate.
13	* Because of their refusal to run any ads for junk food (save for Creator/ChuckECheese ads airing in the first two years of the NBC block), movies or [=DVDs=], qubo runs very few actual commercials. Thus, most of their ads tend to be public service announcements:
14	** A few months before the qubo block ended on NBC, the Book People Unite PSA was shown often.
15	** As of December 2016, qubo will show [=PSAs=] from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6b3IXVzKmA The Foundation For A Better Life]] and very little actual commercials. Qubo likes to air them all the time, even though they've aired it like 30,000,000 times. No joke. The same thing happened on the former ''This Is For Kids'' block on [=ThisTV=], especially during ''WesternAnimation/DangerRangers'', where two of these [=PSAs=] would play in the same break, usually the one after the OnceAnEpisode song.
16	** [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ImnIkZHpR_U ''Can YOUR food do that?!"]]
17	** The NFL [=Play60=] were very common during the 2007-08 season of the block.
18	** Also common were [=PSAs=] that featured Disney characters, most commonly a ''WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}}'' one about carseats.
19	* Nickelodeon went through a phase of encouraging children to eat breakfast. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TO7FLxZRSM Through this lovely PSA.]] ''Every single morning.''
20	** On a similar note, [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnbOsiJoHLk this healthy food-themed PSA]] played a lot during the earlier part of the decade, especially during the ad breaks between the Nick Jr. block's end and the resumption of normal Nickelodeon programming.
21	* People who lived in the United States and watched Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast networks the 80's, 90's or 2000's are likely to remember [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=v0hH-KPAr00 this PSA]] for the Arbor Day Foundation and its catchy song. It even showed up on cable networks such as USA during their Cartoon Express block, and on [[Creator/ABCFamily Fox Family]] at the end of the final commercial break of the shows broadcast during their morning block. On some channels, the ad played every 30 minutes or even twice in the same break because the Arbor Day Foundation had bought so much airtime.
22	* [[http://www.retrojunk.com/commercial/show/28307/be-cool-about-fire-safety This fire safety PSA]] was a common sight on Creator/OneSaturdayMorning during its first two seasons.
23	* Local, city-specific TV stations in the UK (e.g. [[http://www.mustardtv.co.uk Mustard]] in [[UsefulNotes/EastAnglia Norwich]]) don't have much of a viewer base and therefore much of an advertiser base either so end up repeating public information films to fill the gap where paid advertisements would go. (For what it's worth, despite their being ''very'' region-specific this was never as big a problem on the old [[{{Creator/ITV}} ITV]] regions since they had very wide service areas and viewership, thus attracting both local and national marketers.)
24	* This is why ''Don't Put It In Your Mouth'' is a beloved PSA in Canada: it ran during practically every commercial break on children's programming in the 90's because of advertising laws prohibiting the number of ads that could be shown during children's shows in the country. [=PSAs=] didn't fall under these limits, plus it was a minute in length, making it an easy way to fill time back then that couldn't be filled with actual ads. There was also a similar ad involving puppet mice and a mousetrap with the same message (ask your parents if something is OK to eat) that ran around the same time, but not as frequently as ''Don't Put It In Your Mouth''.
25	** In the 2000's, the same treatment happened with ''The House Hippo'', another PSA by Concerned Children's Advertisers. It was so frequently played and popular during that decade that the UK imported the PSA and it was remade two decades later.
26	* As mentioned by [[https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/danmeth/nyc-area-tv-in-the-1980s this article]] on [=BuzzFeed=], the PSA ''We're Not Candy'' ran frequently during television programming for kids in the 1980's. It was so common that it would be featured on one installment of [[ILoveTheExties I Love The Eighties]]!
27	* In the 1980's, ''This Is Your Brain On Drugs'' was the most common PSA to seen chosen during an ad break. It was played so much that the ad became ingrained into American culture, with TV shows, movies and even other commercials referencing the PSA.
28	* For some reason, the American Dental Association's Dudley the Dinosaur [=PSAs=] frequently played on various SaturdayMorningCartoon blocks in the 2000's, including Nick Jr. on CBS, Creator/KidsWB and its successor [=TheCW4Kids=] and [=4KidsTV=].
29	* In the fall of 2001, ''Disney's One Too'' loved showing a ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' PSA about sleep during every final slot of the ad break.
30	* On airings of shows such as ''Anime/SailorMoon'' and ''WesternAnimation/MegaManRubySpears'' from 1995 to 1996, [[https://youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=idJoFq9nvi0 this NACME PSA]] starring Sinbad was frequently played.
31	* The [=DiC=] Kids Network showed [[https://youtu.be/qvZPG3ZbRoI several [=PSAs=] constantly]]. Not counting the ones already listed above, they included the following:
32	** An PSA from The Foundation For A Better Life featuring the song "If You Believe" by Music/KennyLoggins.
33	** A United Cerebral Palsy PSA in which students think a boy's lunch choice is strange. This one also showed up frequently on AFN Kids.
34	** The Energy Hog ad featuring an exterminator trying to remove the titular animals.
35	** A Girl Scouts PSA about how to do well in math and science.
36	** A PSA based on ''WesternAnimation/{{Trollz}}'' in which Amethyst teaches Onyx about crossing the street.
37	** A PSA for the Women's Sports Foundation.
38	** A Smokey Bear PSA using clips from ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}''. This PSA, along with a later version using clips from its sequel, also frequently aired on qubo.
39	** A PSA for the Computer Sciences Coorporation.
40	** A PSA starring actress Lalanie Vergara-Paras (Miranda from ''Series/LizzieMcGuire'') about what she does to stay healthy.
41	** An Operation Graduation PSA in which a bus driver tries to prevent a boy from missing his bus.
42	** A [[Advertising/PartnershipToEndAddiction Partnership For A Drug-Free America]] PSA featuring a song telling kids that they can take many things, but that they should never take drugs. This one also aired frequently on a few other stations in the United States (especially in California) as late as fall 2009.
43	* A PSA for the National Science Foundation with a catchy song about science and technology ("astrology, biology, chemistry, zoology, science and technology!") was made in the 1980s, but apparently continued to play into the early 2000s.
44	* If you live in North America or anywhere else where Christmas is celebrated, expect to see [=PSAs=] from your local TV station wishing you a Happy Holidays. More often or not, they could end up playing a single ad nearly ''every single break'' during the entire month of December, even if Christmas is already over.
45	** The CBS affiliate WSEE in Erie, Pennsylvania is especially guilty of this trope during the holiday season as early as 2015, even after Christmas is over. There would be this one ad of a group of children wishing viewers to have a safe holiday season. Anybody who grew up in that part of the United States during that time will still have ''We Wish you a Merry Christmas'' or any other Christmas song etched into their brain from overexposure as it aired at least once nearly ''every single'' ad break. 2020 was the worst offender, airing almost every single ad break, often twice in the same break or in a row. Some breaks aired it THREE times!
46	* On September 27, 2021, Creator/{{Syfy}} aired the same Adopt US Kids PSA ("First Heartbreak") three times in a row during an airing of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', then twice again during a later episode.
47	* The public television station on Verizon's Fios TV still frequently airs [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMJ6b38xbXg this 2007 PSA]] starring the characters from ''Franchise/{{Shrek}}'' in some markets.
48	* On Creator/OneSaturdayMorning, it was common to see three [=PSAs=] run during the block: Be Cool About Fire Safety, a musical ad for the Arbor Day Foundation featuring Carly Cardinal and any ads from the Partnership For A Drug-Free America.
49	* On KLCS' kids subchannel, it's common to see [[https://youtu.be/_xgHBp9_leY this Arbor Day Foundation PSA]] during every other show. And if they're not showing this, they're showing [[https://youtu.be/VLbigWARfqI this PSA]] featuring ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' characters. Or, [=PSAs=] advertising "smallstep.gov", a government-based site giving out tips to stay healthy, and hasn't been active since 2012. In fact, the aforementioned ''[=VeggieTales=]'' PSA advertises the site as well.
50	* If you watched any kids' programming block on a broadcast network during the 2009-10 season, especially on The CW [=4Kids=] and Cookie Jar Toons on This TV, [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=DTdGc23tw8c this PSA]] featuring Luis and Elmo from ''Series/SesameStreet'' would frequently show up. It got to the point where the former block played it into 2012.
51	** Speaking of Cookie Jar Toons, during the 2012-13 television season, it was common to see [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=JYe0Kl0IypA this PSA]] about brushing your teeth during programming on the block. Because it was a minute in length, it was an easy way to fill an ad space on the block.
52	* Tijuana, Mexico TV station XHDTV-TDT (affiliated with Milenio Televisión) always runs the same 2 English language [=PSAs=] before their station ID:
53	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=higIWOOorRs This one from the Foundation for a Better Life featuring John Denver's Annie's Song]]

Context RepeatingAd / PublicServiceAnnouncement