The Times (page 5) March 15, 2007

QUOTE

Blue Peter admits phone-in fake

Dan Sabbagh

The presenters of Blue Peter were forced to apologise on air yesterday after it emerged that the programme faked the winner of a phone-in competition.

Nearly 14,000 children called to answer a question posed on November 27 last year and were charged 10p a time, but a technical failure prevented the BBC from picking a winner during the programme.

It is understood that, in panic, a member of the production staff randomly picked a girl who was visiting the studio to call from behind the scenes to give the correct answer.

When the girl went on air she declared herself to be “calling from London” – in reality she was in the same studio as the presenters. The child was then given a toy as a prize. She has not been named and is understood to be blameless.

The corporation now faces an inquiry from Icstis, the premium-rate phone line regulator, which can levy a fine of up to £250,000. Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, has been told to brief the BBC Trust about how the corporation is dealing with the issue.

Richard Deverell, the BBC Children’s Controller, made an “unequivocal apology”. He said: “Whilst I am satisfied that there was no premeditated attempt to deceive or mislead viewers, the decision to put a child on air in this way was a serious error of judgment.”

A spokesman for the BBC conceded that there had been a “serious breach of editorial standards” and said that it would not hide behind the technical problems. “The issue here is not that something went wrong, but what people then did about it. The phone-in should have been held over for another day.”

The problem emerged after a Radio 5 Live listener who had witnessed the incident e-mailed in on Friday after a discussion about the growing phone-in scandal that has affected all principal broadcasters.

The phone-in was held to raise money for children orphaned by Aids in Malawi. Unicef received 3¼p from each call, or £450.52. Telecom Express, the call handler, received £207.93, but donated it to the appeal. The line provider, Cable & Wireless, kept £727.25.     {Accentuated by me - ie most of the money kept by C & W ! }

Don Foster, the culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: “When it’s reached the point that even Blue Peter has been implicated in this sorry mess then I think it’s fair to say there has been a serious failure with the regulator.”

The BBC is considering scrapping all premium-rate phone-ins on children’s television.

Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of vision, has begun an emergency review into the incident. The inquiry is to be led by Andrea Wills, a former BBC employee, and will touch on whether it is appropriate to ask children to phone in. The BBC says that it rarely does so and does not seek to make a profit on callins as a matter of policy.

It is the second time that the BBC has been implicated in the premium-rate row, after it emerged that a supposedly live episode of Saturday Kitchen was pre-recorded. Premium-rate services are regulated by Icstis, which has been struggling to keep up with the revelations. The Channel 4 Richard and Judy, The X Factor (ITV) and the Five Brainteaser game show have all been implicated.

The BBC said that a new winner for the Blue Peter competition would be randomly selected from those who took part, under the supervision of an independent solicitor.

It has provided a special question-and-answer statement for parents on its website.

The statement

What happened?

A technical hitch prevented staff from randomly selecting one of the competition entries. As the member of staff thought no one was getting through, they asked a studio visitor to stand in as the winner

Who was the girl?

She was a Blue Peter Team Player who was visiting the studio after winning an unrelated competition.

Did she really know the answer?

Yes, but since she had been in the studio, she had an unfair advantage

Did she receive the prize?

Yes but only as a thank-you for standing in. She didn’t receive the competition winner’s badge or the formal letter that would normally accompany it

Have any other Blue Peter competitions been fixed?

Absolutely not

END QUOTE

A sequel to the above in today's Times.      The Times March 17, 2007

Quote

And today’s game, kids, is Spot the Shyster

The rip-off culture, from government to TV companies       Janice Turner

Sure, Blue Peter presenters have, over the decades, strutted in gay clubs or porn flicks, snorted cocaine, dated Joan Armatrading, tumbled out of nightclubs and skimpy tops. Sins of the flesh: te absolvo etc. But this new phone line scandal was not, as old Biddy Baxter claimed, another case of “human frailty”. Removing pocket money from children (or, more likely, their parents) and stuffing it in the pockets of Cable & Wireless — who received 7p for every 3.5p Blue Peter raised for Unicef — is more serious than, after a small oversight, renaming Fred the tortoise Freda.

What place do premium phone lines really have on children’s television? Occasionally, on Saturday mornings, my sons go into a flurry of searching for a pen, shushing while they scribble down a phone number. “We know the answer, Mum!” they cry. “Can we ring up?” And there’s no denying when faced with a head-scratcher like “Is the British Prime Minister called a) Tony Hair b) Tony Blair or c) Tony Carebear?” my boys can’t be beaten.

So you tell them the question is dumb, deliberately dumb, so lots of people will ring in. It’s a rip-off, a swizz. They look at you so crushed at being called dumb just when they thought they were so smart. And then, wearily, you hand them the phone.

Perhaps the Blue Peter scandal — where 14,000 children phoning a competition line had no chance of getting through and the winning child was plucked from a group visiting the studio — has taught British kids the valuable life-lesson of scepticism. There has been much hand-wringing about a “breach of audience trust”. But do we actually want our children to trust television? Better they get clear-eyed early on about the business model upon which their favourite shows are founded in the multichannel age: grifting cash out of suckers.

Let them know that TV executives commonly think of viewers’ phone revenue as “moron tax”. And that this attitude of contempt is the reason why the makers of Richard & Judy or Saturday Kitchen encouraged viewers to run up their phone bills long after a contest was closed. Yeah, OK, it’s a fix, a cheat, an injustice. But only against saddos — the elderly, housebound, lonely and poor, for whom TV is the most powerful presence in their lives. Who cares about those pathetic enough to vote on whether Eamonn Holmes gets to stuff his fat face with apple charlotte or ginger pears?

As a child at the fair, I recall being warned not to waste my money on the hoopla. The rings are too small, I was told, they won’t fit over the bases, no one ever wins that gold watch. But now the hooplas have multiplied, the stalls are everywhere. My kids scrabble for the scratchcards that skitter out of newspapers or seize a bit of junk mail emblazoned with “Open now to receive your £20,000 special award!”. They look longingly at the spangly flashing pop-ups on websites: “Click here to claim your prize.”

They don’t yet own mobile phones to receive those tempting messages: “Just text this number to claim a free flight.” They haven’t picked up the phone to semi-legal cold-callers who cheerily announce you’ve won a holiday, just ring this number . . . let alone suffered the daily e-mail bombardment of Nigerian fraudsters, unsolicited share tips, the drug company salutations of “Hey Mister, got trouble with your Johnson?”.

How am I to teach children to navigate through the hawkers and shysters of the modern marketplace when I feel so baffled myself? My default mode is now utter distrust. I turn down free gifts with purchase if I have to give my e-mail address: they’ll only flog it on and thus double my spam. I don’t want a loyalty card, a free upgraded phone, to change my electricity supplier or enter a free prize draw. I know your little game, all of you! Because even the wisest fall prey to scams: the most worldly, sophisticated sixtysomething I know received a catalogue in the post, offering thrilling discounts if he rang a certain number. Which he did and hung on for ten minutes, until he was rewarded with a special address to write to . . . and £9.50 on his phone bill.

How can a whole economic stratum based upon huckstering be allowed to exist? But then this is a Government happy to levy “moron tax”, eager to catch the poor’s loose change as it drops into supercasino coffers. So what if National Lottery money is chucked into the bottomless pit of the Olympics? Yes, maybe there was no transparency, the money was shifted, the charities stiffed. But will those scratchcard-addicted chavs whom it belonged to really care? The Blue Peter scandal has not killed innocence, only delusion. Better our children believe Father Christmas doesn’t exist than that he can be reached at the North Pole, call costs may vary, usual terms and conditions apply . .

Telegraph      21 March 07

QUOTE

Ofcom under fire over phone-in row

By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 21/03/2007


The television regulator Ofcom was under mounting pressure yesterday to take a tougher stance against broadcasters involved in the premium rate phoneline scandal.

Mediawatch, the viewers' association, said Ofcom had failed to act "swiftly or decisively" when allegations about phone-in competitions and votes emerged last year.

The criticisms came as a third BBC show, the children's programme Smile, was caught up in the premium rate phone row. It misled viewers by asking them to phone up and take part in a game, even though the programme was pre-recorded.

Last week presenters of the BBC's flagship children's show Blue Peter were forced to apologise on air after it emerged that the results of a charity phone-in last year had been faked. Ofcom is investigating around 20 incidents involving premium rate telephone lines. Most of the investigations began before the phone-in scandal was triggered last month.

If any of the commercial broadcasters is found to have breached the Broadcasting Code and deliberately defrauded viewers, they could be fined up to five per cent of their revenue.

ITV had a turnover of £2.18 billion last year and could be fined up to £110 million. The rules are different for the BBC, which can be fined a maximum of £250,000.

Ofcom is also considering new rules on the use of premium rate phone services.They could include preventing broadcasters from charging viewers if they phone in after a competition has closed.

ITV is close to completing its "independent" audit of all its shows that use premium rate phonelines.

John Beyer, the director of Media Watch, formerly the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, accused Ofcom of dragging its heels.

"Ofcom seems to have taken a low profile, although they have received hundreds of calls from viewers," he said. "They don't seem to have acted very swiftly or very decisively."    
[Nothing has chaged then]

He also questioned whether the ITV's "independent" investigation of its use of premium rate phones, carried out by the consultants Deloitte, had been sufficiently transparent.

"Nobody seems to know what brief they were given, and yet they have come up with a clean bill of health for all these programmes," Mr Beyer said.

Ofcom insisted that it was taking the allegations about premium rates seriously, but that the division of responsibility between itself and the premium rate telephone regulator Icstis was "entirely appropriate".

The regulator is investigating complaints about 23 programmes, including the BBC's Blue Peter and Brainteaser, a quiz on Five. Icstis is investigating complaints about 10 programmes, including Channel 4's Richard & Judy, the BBC's Saturday Kitchen and ITV's The X Factor.

The premium rates scandal was triggered by a newspaper investigation into Richard & Judy's You Say, We Pay quiz. It was claimed that viewers were encouraged to call in to the show, at a cost of £1, after the contestants had been chosen.

Good articles but a shame they were in The Times and The Daily Telegraph where they were preaching to the converted instead of in The Sun and The Daily Mirror which most of the ripped off callers read.

And what of the covert 084/7 premium rate numbers not regulated by ICSTIS and for which Ofcom is therefore directly responsible.  What is its excuse for not taking any action over those (eg NEG's doctor surgery line 0844 scam)? :-/ >:( :'(

It seems clear that Ofcom us under strict instructions from New Labour not to damage the profitable businesses of its major cronies such as the Murdochs (Sky) or Capita. ;) >:( >:( >:(