The name is sometimes also applied, faute de mieux, to similar films from other countries, but the US equivalent is the public service announcement (PSA).
[3] They are sometimes thought to concern only topics related to safety, but there are PIFs on many other subjects, including animal cruelty, protecting the environment, crime prevention, how to vote at a general election or how to fill in a census form.
After the war, PIFs were produced by the Central Office of Information (now closed), and again by private contractors, which were usually small film companies.
They are still being produced, although the vastly reduced need for broadcasters to turn to third-party filler material to deal with unused airtime during breaks or junctions means they are now only seen rarely, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were frequently shown during and in between programmes on ITV in overnight, as advertising was generally difficult to sell during that time.
A number of musical artists have been heavily influenced by the analogue, overdriven sound of British PIFs, including Boards of Canada and most artists on the Ghost Box Records label, especially The Advisory Circle, whose album Other Channels directly references or samples many PIFs, including Keep Warm, Keep Well.
The comedian Chris Morris satirised public information films in The Day Today in an episode where there was a constitutional crisis.