BBC fined £400,000 in fake contests scandal
THE BBC has been fined a record £400,000 for misleading audiences over competitions.
Television charity campaigns Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children In Need were singled out by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom.
Comic Relief and Sport Relief were fined £45,000 each and Children In Need £35,000. Other fines were imposed on radio shows, including those presented by Jo Whiley, Liz Kershaw and Russell Brand.
Ofcom said that in some cases the audience had no chance of winning competitions but the shows went ahead anyway.
“In each of these cases the BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly,” the watchdog said last night.
“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.”
The penalty is the highest Ofcom has imposed on the corporation and the BBC was criticised for wasting licence payers’ money to pay it.
John Beyer, director of Mediawatch UK, said: “You hear a lot of stories about BBC employees running up huge bills and that is an area where they could make this up to the public.”
Cases exposed by Ofcom included the name of a fictitious winner being read out during the Children In Need appeal in 2005 and a similar incident on a Sport Relief phone-in in July 2006.
Last year a member of the Comic Relief production team posed as a winner on a phone-in on BBC1 and in January this year shows hosted by Brand and Whiley were said to have misled the public.
Callers were also invited to participate in “live” competitions on pre-recorded episodes of shows broadcast in 2006.
Kershaw’s show, which faked winners of listener competitions on up to 17 occasions, was hit with the biggest individual fine of £115,000. The Jo Whiley Show was fined £75,000 and Brand’s show on BBC 6 Music £17,500.
Last night, the BBC said it had apologised and would be issuing new guidance to programme makers.
In May, Ofcom fined ITV a record £5.7million for abusing premium rate phone services in viewer competitions.
