My money's on Mediawatch-UK, formally National Viewers' and Listeners' Association set up by Mary Whitehouse. They apparently want possession of "extreme pornography" aka that sold in licensed sex shops to be punishable by three years in prison. It's director removes material from its entry on Wikipedia that he doesn't agree with. Apparently.
I love the thought of those old hypocrites all subscribing to the XXX channels just to "monitor" them and then complain.
The number of complaints and fines against the 'babe' channels in recent times is quite worrying. I wonder if someone or some organisation is running an orchestrated campaign against them
My money's on Mediawatch-UK, formally National Viewers' and Listeners' Association set up by Mary Whitehouse. They apparently want possession of "extreme pornography" aka that sold in licensed sex shops to be punishable by three years in prison. It's director removes material from its entry on Wikipedia that he doesn't agree with. Apparently.
The other popular theory is that rival channels complain to get the competition closed down/fined. If that is happening then it really is a case of cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Brekkie posted:
I love the thought of those old hypocrites all subscribing to the XXX channels just to "monitor" them and then complain.
The channels complained about are generally FTA and in many cases thats the basis for the complaint. The trouble is, there is no way for the channels to encrypt and still be accessible to the viewer who does want to watch them without the channel and/or the viewer paying Sky. That is what Ofcom should be sorting out before they advise channels to encrypt.
sda| posted:
I won £100 on the great big british quiz once, only because the presenter was giving out obscure clues and references that no one seemed to get. I never bothered to enter the picture quizzes, far too fixed!
(The answer was "Sly and the Family Stone")
There was certainly a lot of money to be made from these channels when they first launched. For every ITV Play there were several other channels stuck at the arse end of the EPG doing easy games (or difficult games which would become easy when the presenter started giving clues) with hardly any callers. I made at least £10,000 (after deducting my phone bill) by winning £50 here, £100 there (biggest single win was £1000) from phone-in quizes before the You Say, We Pay scandel put a stop to them.
People were just stupid/greedy though. Instead of trying to win £15 for answering "What colour is the sky?" many people tried to win £50,000 by answering "How many cats?"
I made at least £10,000 (after deducting my phone bill) by winning £50 here, £100 there (biggest single win was £1000) from phone-in quizes before the You Say, We Pay scandel put a stop to them.
Now you tell us....tsk!
davidlees posted:
...many people tried to win £50,000 by answering "How many cats?"
I'm still waiting for the answer to the question, never mind the number of callers!
Includes upheld complaints about BBC News (at Ten) being 'too graphic' and an upheld complaint about flashing images during a film on Movies4Men+1 despite the fact the film was presumedly shown an hour earlier on Movies4Men without complaint.
As usual, some of the 'Other Programmes' listed at the end make for interesting reading and I wish they would include more details. No one would be surprised to hear that Ofcom received a complaint about a programme called 'The WI Guide to Brothels'. What is surprising is that it was listed as 'Exorcism/Occult/Paranormal' rather than 'Sex/Nudity'.
I wonder if it would be possible to obtain more details about the list at the end by submitting a FOI request. Anyone know?
One thing I don't get with reading the document is that some of the complaints are about some of Viasat's channels that broadcast to Scandinavian countries and parts of Eastern Europe, I appreciate the channels are broadcast from London, but they aren't openly available to viewers in the UK, so why is Ofcom reporting it?
One thing I don't get with reading the document is that some of the complaints are about some of Viasat's channels that broadcast to Scandinavian countries and parts of Eastern Europe, I appreciate the channels are broadcast from London, but they aren't openly available to viewers in the UK, so why is Ofcom reporting it?
Just a question...
Their licences are in the UK.
This is a legacy of the early 1990s when the governments of Sweden and Denmark wouldn't give Viasat licences so they signed up as "UK" channels, and the setup has remained in place.
Funny reading OFCOM giving television and radio stations a stern reminder.
If you read this broadcast bulletin, you will see there is a real lack of people keeping hold of their previous broadcasts, of course, there was one radio station that had "a broken sound card" - but there was a television station as well that had not kept an archive.
The law is for 60 days for TV stations to have all of their broadcasts on tape so OFCOM can recall them on demand, 42 for radio stations. I would have thought it would have been much longer.
Not sure about the FOI laws in England, they're certainly a lot less useful than those up here, but I think you probably could. Which is great, because I'd love to see who complained about Big Brother's Big Mouth on Due Impartiality/Bias...
I've never really been happy with Ofcom's rules surrounding some aspects of television.
As regards appropriate material and scheduling for children, shouldn't it be the parent's responsibility to make sure that what their children watch is acceptable? And if not, they can change the channel? And shouldn't the parents, should there be a lack of warning actually on the programme, make sure their kids are aware that they shouldn't do that type of thing?
I wonder if it would be possible to obtain more details about the list at the end by submitting a FOI request. Anyone know?
There is an FOI form on their website. To save multiple requests, I have just asked:
Quote:
Subject: Broadcast Bulletin issue number 117
Information Requested (please be as specific as possible):
Please supply the details of the complaints received for those listed in "Other Programmes Not In Breach/Resolved", in particular I would like the wording of the complaint/s for each item.
I don't see why they wouldn't be able to answer that. Depending on the response I may suggest they include a bit more detail when publishing bulletins in the future.
