I love the quote:

"If broadcasters want audiences to go on spending millions calling in, they need to show they take consumer protection as seriously as programme content."

"...As seriously as programme content" - after last week's programme on the Queen, let's hope they don't take that literally!

"If broadcasters want audiences to go on spending millions calling in, they need to show they take consumer protection as seriously as programme content."

Oh dear - oh dear.

Enough said really.

... but sad when it affects non brain-dead competitions too, e.g. see

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6723211.stm

(the BBC's Photographer of the Year competition)

Phone in's are a joke, plain and simple.

I seriously hope OFCOM take another look at those quiz show channels, that invite the viewer to call a £1.50 p/m number with the hope of getting on air and answering either:

a) A totally obvious question, or

b) A 'puzzle' so vague and with more catches than my aunt Pol's dodgy pullovers.

I wonder if people realise they could spend just as much per call on lotto or scratchcards - and have a far better chance of winning?

Oh yes, and they use fake contestants too.

Dumping all brain dead question "lottery" competitions. There is absolutely no skill involved, they are purely luck of the draw, so how they get away with it when only Camelot have the licence for running public lotteries in the UK, I don't know. I'm sure a quick check of their entries would reveal 99.9% of people picking one option, therefore proving my point.

This goes even more so for the commercial channels. I'd rather watch a test card than those moronic hosts who would do better as adverts for plastic surgery and teeth whitening than entertainers.

So the BBC get fined £50,000 for the premium rate scam on Blue Peter and they pay that fine out of licence fees.

So, every licence payer in the country ended up paying for this as opposed to the BBC themselves.

The BBC shouldn't be surprised by what has happened. If it produced its own content in-house and used full time staff on secure permanent contracts, rather than outside production companies and short term contract staff, then it would have programme production staff that actually cared about what the BBC stands for.

If I could stop paying my licence fee at this point I would.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/6901179.stm

The £50K Blue Peter fine is clearly nothing to an organisation that just spent £70K giving free tickets, food and drink to its "guests" at the recent Glastonbury festival. I live 10 miles from the festival site and couldn't get tickets but as a licence payer my own money is used to give freebies to the BBC's cronies.

To simply not own a TV!

I have noticed over the last few days that Five US (not sure about the other "five" channels) hasnt had the usual late nights Call in Quiz's.

Not really bothered by it, just that its weird not turning over the instant its comes on, now I just lay there with the "back at 16:00" tag line (by then i'm zoned out ready for sleep).

I really am at a loss to understand why we actually pay a license fee.

The BBC should stand on its own two feet and if it suffers from bad management and goes bust, so much the better!

It makes money from premium rate phone ins and should use advertising on its website and not pin it all no the british public. Im sure there a multitude of ways it can make money.

the BBC stinks of death

It disappoints me that there are enough people stupid enough to phone these competitions in the first place.

As for trust! Any body with some brains knows anything and everthing in TV land is made up, sexed up or just plains lies when the real ting is not exciting enough.

£50k? To a TV/media company? That is a fine?

First of all I was shocked at the insignificant fine (Come on, £50k for defrauding thousands of people)

Then I realised (as another reader pointed out above) that the fine is surely going to come from the licence fee payers and not from the hundreds of thousands of pounds per year salaries of the big bosses.

To state that we all will pay the £50k fine through the licence fee is to imply that we wouldn't be paying it otherwise - which is only half the truth. If the fine were levied upon an advertising-based commercial channel, then we would all be paying it too, through the money we spend on everyday goods.

At least you can get rid of your TV and stop paying the licence fee if you want (you would soon miss it I'm sure, and you would miss the BBC programming the most, assuming you are of reasonable intelligence and have an inquisitive mind). You cannot stop buying products which fund the commercial broadcasters.

Clearly it is wrong that some BBC programmes have faked phone-ins. However most of them did not involve premium-rate lines, they are a fraction of the cost of the trivial "competitions" put on by other channels. In addition the BBC is going through a lengthy and apparently honest appraisal of its phone-ins and publicising this process. An entirely private, profit-oriented organisation would not be anywhere near this transparent. So no marks for faking it, but top marks for doing the right thing and trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Anyone else of the opinion that deception is a criminal matter?

If so, should ( exhorbitantly ) paid executives ( from the public purse ) be as responsible for their actions as others ie the Network rail executives.

Maybe if enough people reported the matter to the Police something might be done?

WTF. holy crap. a license fee for tv would never work in the US. We would impale any politician that suggest that.

Are you guys mad!? You actually want advertising on BBC channels?

You want programs a whole 15mins shorter so they can stick adverts for nappies and tampons right through the middle of it?

I remember the glory days when Star Trek was shown on BBC2, all the way through, no adverts. Watch Star Trek on Sky, and sure enough, every 15 mins. God knows what it's like in America.

Fining the BBC does seem rediculous. I'd favour fining the Executives. £50k may be small fry compared to how much money it makes from the phone lines - could be a viable business model... Fine an executive, doc their salary... THAT'LL get their attention.

Anyone here think that ITV, Channel Four, Five aren't doing exactly the same thing?

I'm very disappointed in the BBC. But at least they've come clean.

You have to pay to watch tv??

Yeah, but ... we do actually have some programmes (programs) which challenge the mind and appeal to IQs of over 69.

Not many, mind!

I agree that the quizzes with stupid questions like "what is the first letter of the alphabet - a) A, b) zebra, c) soup" appear to have no skill whatsoever and ought to come under lottery rules on that basis.

http://veroblog.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/endemols-cheetah-found-to-be-a-cheater/

The get-out normally employed is the same one as on everyday product competitions (like on bags of crisps etc) which state "no purchase necessary". Somewhere in the tiny print on screen they say you can also give your answer online. This is while you listne to the on-screen muppet repeat the number to cal for the bazillionth time with no mention of this free option.

I have always cynically assumed that these online answers are simply ignored. I'm no longer sure that is a cynical viewpoint. (Although it is said that 'a cynic is one who sees the world as it really is, rather than belives it to be as it ought').

There are investigations underway to determine if this 'free' option is sufficiently well promoted, and if it still leaves issues such as time contraints for answers to be submitted. In particular there are questions being raised about the fact that very simply not everyone has access to the internet, free or otherwise, and that in fact the divide between the internet haves and have-nots closely mirrors the pattern of people who watch this kind of stuff.

"Yeah, but ... we do actually have some programmes (programs) which challenge the mind and appeal to IQs of over 69.

Not many, mind!"

Here in the US thats called PBS and it is supported by tax dollars. PBS is how first learned of DR who.

"Yeah, but ... we do actually have some programmes (programs) which challenge the mind and appeal to IQs of over 69.

Not many, mind!"

Here in the US thats called PBS and it is supported by tax dollars. PBS is how first learned of DR who.