BBC told to stump up £400k for faking competitions on air

Published on Wednesday 30 July 2008 13:24

THE BBC has been hit with a hefty fine for faking competitions on television and radio.

The corporation has been made to pay 400,000 by media regulator Ofcom.

It is a record fine for the BBC and relates to the broadcaster misleading audiences by staging phone-in competitions on shows such as Comic Relief and Children In Need and announcing fictitious winners at the end of them.

Sport Relief was also listed as one of the offending programmes, as were radio shows by Jo Whiley and Russell Brand.

The regulator found that the competition rigging was of a "very serious" nature, adding that in some of the cases mentioned programme-makers knew the entrants contestants wouldn't have any chance of winning, but pressed ahead regardless.

"Ofcom considered that these breaches of the (broadcasting) code were very serious," the watchdog said. "In each of these cases the BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly.

"The investigations found that, in some cases, the production team had taken premeditated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning.

"In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems made up the names of winners.

"Overall, Ofcom found that the BBC failed to have adequate management oversight of its compliance and training procedures to ensure that the audience was not misled.

"Although viewers and listeners paid the cost of their calls to take part in these competitions, the BBC did not receive any money from the entries."

A member of the production team posed as a winner on a phone-in competition on Comic Relief on BBC1 in March last year, and a similar scenario featured on a Sport Relief phone-in in July 2006.

On Children in Need, in 2005, the name of a fictitious winner was read out on air.

Earlier this year ITV was hit with a record 5.67 million fine for the abuse of premium rate lines on shows including Ant And Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.

GMTV, which is 75 per cent owned by ITV, was fined a previous record of 2m.

In July last year, the BBC was ordered to pay a then unprecedented 50,000 fine over a Blue Peter phone-in scandal in which a young studio guest posed as a competition winner.

Channel 4 was also fined 1.5m for misconduct involving phone-in competitions on Richard And Judy and Deal Or No Deal.

the BBC said: "Ofcom has recognised that neither the BBC nor any member of staff made any money from these lapses."