The one thing that British television commercial breaks lack is the cheerful knocking ads that are such a feature of US TV advertising: it’s generally felt in the advertising world that knocking a competitor by name is simply giving him free publicity, but News At Ten would certainly be enlivened by British Telecom and Mercury Communications laying into one another hammer and tongs as AT&T and MCI Communications used to do – the Wall Street Journal notes that when Ma Bell ridiculed MCI’s quality of service by showing kids talking to each other using tin cans and a piece of string, MCI responded by rubbishing AT&T’s cheap rates that applied only in the dead of night by changing AT&T’s celebrated slogan to Reach out and wake someone.
