Alcohol and Betting Radio Advertising in Spain. A Comparative Analysis of the Minor’s Protection Time Slot from a Media Responsibility Perspective

This research analyzes the presence of advertising and radio mentions of alcoholic beverages and sports betting, two products that represent harmful behaviors for the audiences’ health. To do this, a quantitative content analysis was undertaken for all of the programming of the three most listened radio stations in Spain (Cadena Ser, COPE, and Onda Cero) throughout 2017, obtaining a total corpus of 2848 radio messages distributed as follows: 266 radio spots and 2582 radio mentions. The messages were also analyzed according to the broadcasting schedules (protected time-slot or non-protected time-slot). The results showed that advertising and sports betting mentions were more present in the regular programming of the three stations (n = 2304), with mentions (n = 2582) being more numerous than advertising spots (n = 544). Moreover, it is evident that in practice, none of the radio stations respected the protected time slots since the majority of the mentions and spots of high alcoholic beverages and sports bets were verified between 6:00–21:59 (n = 2522). These results show the prevailing need for greater control over this type of content by public entities, demonstrating a significant lack of regulation by the media’s self-control mechanisms.