Community Channel will be first broadcaster to show banned anti-bullying advert

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The UK's only charity-run TV channel is to be the first broadcaster to show the anti-bullying advertisement originally banned by television regulators.

TV regulator Clearcast (formerly known as BACC) last week lifted the ban following an appeal by the anti-bullying charity behind the advert, Beatbullying. Forty-nine MPs signed an early day motion calling for the ban to be overturned. The £1.2 million advert was created by M&C Saatchi for Beatbullying in memory of the schoolgirl Megan Gillan, who committed suicide last year after she was bullied both online and at school.

The advert features a young girl sewing her mouth shut, showing how the victims of bullying feel and promotes the charity's Cyber Mentors site .

"We're delighted that Community Channel has taken up our cause and is the first TV channel to broadcast our ad campaign. We hope that others will follow their lead," said Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of Beatbullying.

Community Channel, owned by the Media Trust , is a 24-7 channel dedicated to the charity and voluntary sector. It airs on Sky 539, Virgin TV 233 24 hours per day, and from 6am to 9am on Freeview 87.

The first broadcast will air on the Community Channel on Wednesday 10 February at 9.47pm - after the watershed.

The Community Channel intends to publish the video on its website as well. It can currently be viewed on YouTube .

"We believe this ad campaign carries a vital message that bullying in any form is not acceptable, and hope that it will help prevent tragic cases like that of Megan Gillan ever happening again," said Mark Dodd, Media Trust's digital media director, announcing the first broadcast of the advert.

"Once the ban was overturned, we wanted to take a stance and get the message across," Media Trust's head of press, Bill Bloom, told Journalism.co.uk.

Bloom hopes that other broadcasters will be also be "brave enough" to show the advert, he added.

Clearcast said that when assessed in October 2009, the script had proposed images which were considered "too brutal" for TV. Once it was reviewed as a finished advertisement, it was pleased to give it the "green light," the organisation said.

"We know bullying is a really important issue and TV ads are an excellent way of making people more aware of the problem," said Alice Shelley, copy group manager at Clearcast. "We're pleased this thought-provoking ad can now be seen by a much wider audience."