Channel 4 fined £1.5m

From MediaGuardian...

Ofcom has fined Channel 4 £1.5m for misconduct in viewer competitions on Richard and Judy's You Say We Pay and Deal or No Deal.

The media regulator, which in September fined GMTV a record £2m over phone-in competitions, has fined Channel 4 £1m over the You Say We Pay contest and £500,000 over the phone-in on Noel Edmonds' daytime show.

Ofcom has directed Channel 4 to broadcast a summary of its findings around Richard and Judy and Deal or No Deal programmes on three separate occasions.

Channel 4 was deemed to have broken the broadcasting code in three areas.

The main areas of misconduct involved picking competition finalists before lines had closed for You Say We Pay, and operating a "staggered selection process" for choosing finalists in both You Say We Pay and Deal or No Deal.

This effectively meant that unfair odds were created because later entrants to a competition had a lower probability of being shortlisted as a potential winner, according to the regulator.

Channel 4 has today said it intends to start legal proceedings against phone service operator Eckoh to recover costs incurred over You Say We Pay.

The broadcaster said it accepted Ofcom's ruling and is also donating £600,000 to charity - in addition to the £300,000 previously pledged.

Merry Christmas C4.

That'll teach you to rip us off.

An insider told me they're paying the fine out of money allocated to a new series of idents.

Merry Christmas, Simon.

Well since I'm not as bothered about C4 pres as others here...

Shame it won't come out of the BB9 budget

Fair play to you.

good to see the big companies get their knuckles rapped for cheating.

But then, Channel 4 is a non-profit, publicly owned corporation, rather than a for-profit TV company like ITV plc.

(In a way, Channel 4 is to television broadcasting, like the Mozilla Foundation is to internet software.)

Well done OFCOM - kerching!


Not worth going over old ground once again, but fines are not the answer to everything.

Nearly twelve months on and there is still no regulator led, industry wide code of practice in place.


And really the public aren't that bothered - the OFCOM report suggests £20m+ was raised in revenue, of which only £82,000 has been reclaimed.

Sorry but that's just specious reasoning.

I would like the 5 quid or so back I spent trying to win the Deal or No Deal viewer game, but the form filling and remembering of dates (or digging out bills) makes it not worth the time and motion.

Its quite wrong to suggest I'm not "that bothered".

As Channel 4 is not a profit making channel, then the only real suffers of this fine will be the viewers ... again. Channel 4 operate on a small budget as it is and heavily rely on Big Brother in order to generate over 10% of its income each year. £1.5m would be buttons to ITV, similarly to how GMTV's £2m fine hasn't damaged it that much but I think the fine to C4 could actually do slight damage to the channel. Still, they only have themselves to blame.

Exactly.





So you're so concerned it's "not worth the time and motion" to bother about it then!

You're arguing semantics, Brekkie. I know how I feel.

I don't like being cheated but, strange though you may think it, my time is worth more than what I will recoup in the exercise.

I'm unlikely ever to enter such a competition again though - with the exception of the gadget show as their prizes are awesome and I'm yet to hear anything bad about them.