Advertising is an important cog in the wheels of industry and commerce. As a tycoon once remarked, doing business without advertising is like winking at a woman in the dark: you know what you are doing, but nobody else does. Advertising can also be entertaining. Those Saturday night television countdown compilations of The 100 Greatest Ever TV Commercials are at least as much a tribute to the place that some commercials hold in our affections, and our collective memories, as they are a reflection of the creative bankruptcy of television commissioning editors. Advertising on the small screen is more than a regretable necessity. It has virtues of its own.

Those virtues should not, though, be stretched too far. For there are only so many times in an hour of television-viewing that you can bear to listen to yet another Clist celebrity (defined as “someone whose name you might manage to remember by next Tuesday”) alerting you to the benefits of consolidating all your loans into just one easy monthly payment.

Yet it seems that Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, is minded to allow television channels to steal a few more minutes out of each broadcasting hour for additional commercials. The European Union is in the process of enacting its Audiovisual Media Services Directive, aimed at minting a new set of rules for television regulation to bring it into line with developments in audiovisual technology and advertising. Sensing that the new directive is likely to bless a liberalising of TV advertising, Ofcom is planning to hold a review of broadcasting within its own fiefdom of the United Kingdom, and there is every indication that the regulator is prepared to relax the present limits on the amount of advertising permitted on British television channels.

At the moment, Britain’s commercial terrestrial channels – ITV1, Channel 4, Five – are limited to running no more than an average of seven minutes of advertising per hour of broadcasting. Cable and satellite channels have a slightly looser allowance, of an average of nine minutes per hour. Ofcom seems to be thinking of raising the limit to between nine and twelve minutes for all broadcasters, early in the next decade. However, since nine minutes is believed to be the likely ceiling Ofcom will pick, the liberalisation will most benefit terrestrial channels.

The real test, nonetheless, is whether it will be of benefit to viewers. It cannot be claimed that there is a public clamour for extra advertising and every reason to suspect that it would be resented were it imposed. If those in charge of television are smart they will concentrate on providing better programming, not more commercials.