Blue Peter scandal

Hi Everyone this is my first post
My Six year old tries or gets me to try all Childrens TV Competitions for her like all her friends from School get their parents to do the same, I know the chances of winning are really slim but I can now put my hand on my heart and say " darling a lot of this is a con and we will never win" Thank you Blue Peter one less job for a Dad.
PS. I did a drawing and painting for my daughter to enter (cheating I know) but to serve me right I got beat by an 8 year old from Milton Keynes, Hopefully the 8 year olds parents were cheating to or Im back off to School.

Honoured your grace.

I don't think they go that far back, The only numbers I remember on Going Live were standard 01/ 081 numbers (which of course were more expensive to some viewers than others!) and certainly don't remember a premium rate number.

Eeee, in my day it were all 'write your answer on the back of a postcard'!

Hahahaha!! That'll teach ya. Does nothing for your ego does it!

Makes sense; a very green junior member of staff, lacking in common sense, desperately trying to please by rescuing the item during a live programme

On a related note. I'd be interested to see how text voting is affected.

This morning Moyles was running a completion as part of this Red Nose Rallyoke thing. I texted in with about a minute before the lines closed and got my delivery report asap, however didn't get the "thanks for your text" message until an hour later. Did my text count? I wonder.

Hard to say it possibly did count, depending on how restricted the network they're on is, either that or Jocelyn/Aled wasn't typing quick enough.

Look at New Years Eve when everyone tries to send a text message & it can take forever to send or get a reply.

However I wouldn't be suprised if they are investigated next

I was shocked when I heard about this on Five Live at about 4.30pm this afternoon and I saw when Konnie, Zoe and Andy had to apologise for this. I think what they did was pretty stupid and if these investigations never happened we would have probably never found out about it.

In those situations it's common for the "thanks for your vote / text" message to be sent AFTER the lines have closed and there's been enough time to clear out the incoming messages. It means then the servers can process the incoming texts rather than having to deal with the outgoing as well and therefore run the risk of blocking incoming messages dealing with something that could be done later.

... but I do agree that it would help if people knew that was the case!

Absolutely.

I just think it's a sad sign of the times that Blue Peter are inviting kids to ring premium rate numbers in the first place. Even if it's only 10p, and even if the money goes to charity, it still serves to wean children on to the premium rate telephone industry.

When I was a kid, BP got their viewers to raise money for charity by collecting aluminium drinks cans, and all over the country kids were rifling through litter bins and hedges for whatever they could find. It got kids out of the house, busy and active, and made the streets a bit cleaner too. They probably wouldn't allow it nowadays as it would endanger children's health and safety. Far better to have them slumped in front of the telly calling premium rates on their mobiles; in a few years they can move on to the "harder stuff" and start calling Quiz Call.

I see what you're saying, but of course this wasn't fundamentally how they raised money for this appeal was it?

I'm sure 089* vote lines were used towards the end of Biddy's day for "vote for your favourite clip and we'll show it on the last show of the series" type features. But at least then the price of such a call compared favourably with the price of a stamp.