Victim #1: England
British regulators have banned an advert aimed at luring tourists to Australia due to its use of a mild swear word, Tourism Australia says.
The headline for the commercial, which features Australians drinking and frolicking on the beach, is "So where the bloody hell are you?".
As a result, the word "bloody" will be cut for the advert when shown on UK TV, according to Tourism Australia.
The advert is part of a $100m campaign to lure more tourists to Australia.
Tourism Australia managing director Scott Morrison said the ban would only make the campaign more successful:
"We thank the UK authorities for the extra free publicity and invite them to have a 'bloody' good holiday in Australia, especially with the Commonwealth Games now on and the Ashes coming up later in the year," he said.
Mr Morrison nevertheless said he hoped the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) would reconsider its decision.
Australian Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said the ban was "comical'', because the uncut commercial would still appear in cinema, in print and online in the UK.
"The regulator is out of touch with British opinion - based on our research and the initial feedback the British are loving our cheeky sense of humour.''
"The regulators have clearly misplaced their sense of humour - and this from a country that brought us Benny Hill, the Two Ronnies and Little Britain,'' she said.
No-one at the BACC was available to comment on the ban on Thursday.
Victim #2: Canada
NO sooner than British censors cleared Australia's colourful tourism campaign, Canadian officials have banned it, but not because of the word "bloody".
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has refused to run the "Where The Bloody Hell Are You" ad during family television programming because of the word "hell", Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reported today.
"It just shows you the different taste levels of audiences in various cultures," CBC spokeswoman Ruth Ellen Soles told the newspaper.
"'Hell' is a problem for us in terms of kids and family viewing. It comes under the category of 'taste' and in these situations we listen to what our audience tells us."
Tourism Australia last week submitted the commercials to the CBC and to Telecaster, which screens commercials before they appear on Canada's private broadcasters.
The CBC said the ad could run alongside most of its content, but not on two programs it characterised as "family" programming. It also would not be allowed in family Easter specials.
"We've also told the agency that we'll be monitoring audience reaction and if we get a significant number of complaints, we'll rethink running it," Ms Soles told the Globe and Mail.
The head of Telecaster said that although it had approved the ads, it would flag them so individual broadcasters knew they contained objectionable language.
"Those are words that we would generally have problems with. They're on our list of bad words because we don't want kids picking up on that," said Jim Patterson, president and chief executive officer of the Television Bureau of Canada, which runs Telecaster.
Tourism Australia's Canada director Luke Jones said the adverts were likely to run there later this month or next.
British authorities allowed the advert to screen there at the weekend after Tourism Minister Fran Bailey flew over to persuade them to change their minds.
British television audiences will now be able to see the entire advertisement, which features Australia's top tourist attractions and ends with the tag line: "So where the bloody hell are you?".
The ad was pulled after Britain's Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) objected to use of the word "bloody".
Victim #3, the most inevitable one, the USA
A KEY conservative American lobby group is set to unleash a campaign of protest against Australian tourism's "where the bloody hell are you?" TV advertisement.
The controversial commercial made its US debut tonight in front of 20 million American TV viewers and one influential group was not amused.
The American Family Association (AFA), which has more than two million members and leads campaigns against abortion and gay rights, was upset with the bikini-clad model Lara Bingle's use of "bloody" and "hell" in the ad's tagline.
AFA members are expected to bombard Tourism Australia with thousands of emails and phone calls in coming weeks to vent their feelings.
Members are also expected to boycott Australia as a holiday destination.
"I just feel pretty sure the typical American family who is watching TV with their children and they're exposed to this ad are going to be upset," AFA director of special projects, Randy Sharp, said.
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"I don't want my children to hear that phrase.
"It's a shocking phrase because we're not familiar with it.
"I guess they use it all the time in Australia, but it's a foreign language here so I think it'll have a negative impact rather than positive."
British TV authorities dropped a ban on the use of the word "bloody" after pressure from Australia, but now Canadian authorities are unhappy with the way the ad portrays the drinking of unbranded beer.
Tourism Australia launched the ad in the US with a 30-second spot during the hit TV series Lost, which draws around 20 million American viewers each week.
The ad also aired on some of America's most-watched cable TV channels, including Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, the popular A&E channel, TNT, TBS, Fine Living and the home improvement network, HGTV.
The ad has not upset America's broadcast regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but all it takes is for one viewer complaint for the FCC to launch an investigation.
FCC spokesperson Rebecca Fisher said she was unaware of any complaints.
Tourism Australia acting managing director Andrew McEvoy said US TV networks had no problem clearing the ad.
The Mississippi-based AFA's campaigns have had enormous lobbying success in the US.
Last year the group called on its members to file formal complaints against US TV network CBS for a "teenage orgy scene" depicted in Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia's hit TV series, Without A Trace.
The FCC last week fined more than 100 CBS affiliate stations $US3.6 million ($5 million) for airing the orgy scene.
The AFA website congratulates its members on the campaign with a "You did it!" headline and a link to send the FCC a thank-you message.
The AFA is also calling on its members to lobby Pizza Hut to ban a "sexually suggestive" ad featuring pop star Jessica Simpson, in which she feeds food into a teenager's mouth, causing the boy to faint.
Mr Sharp said he enjoyed the Tourism Australia ad until the end when Bingle asks "where the bloody hell are you?"
"When you think 'bloody' in America you think the red liquid that flows from human bodies which is usually a sign of some kind of violence," Mr Sharp said.
Tourism Australia contact details will be made available to AFA members.
"They will hear from a lot of our members who are going to be insulted," Mr Sharp said.
"Australians are spending all of these millions of dollars inviting us, and if we go over there are we going to be exposing our kids to foul language and images of bloody?
"We don't want our kids to hear the term 'bloody'.
"We certainly don't want our kids to hear profanity."
The moral to this story... the "where the bloody hell are you?" campaign might be lame, but the rest of the World is lamer.
Wow, they're in their own little world.
