Premium rate phone-in saga: ITV Play Channel Axed

OK, watched it now and am pretty furious at certain TV execs - mainly those in control of Panorama! I've seen better journalism in the Daily Star!


They accuse these quiz TV shows for taking viewers for mugs - they should look at themselve - a piece of so-called investigative journalism two months after the rest of the media took notice that only uncovered one thing of interest - the problems with GMTV.


Not defending GMTV - but for a breakfast programme with lines closing at midnight - and winners being picked at 11pm - later 9pm - just exactly how many people are likely to think 12 hours after the broadcast they'll phone up.

They went on to say the practice continued when GMTV closed lines within the show at 9am - but alot of that was based on presumption. By their own admission, the £13m figure was come up with based on one day.


Secondly - the complaints about TV shows trying to convince people to call. It might be wrong, but it's hardly a revelation - and is something that is common practice in many other industries - putting a positive spin on it, when often that positive spin is ****.


Thirdly - the Blue Peter scandal. Firstly, the parents at the show that day coming forward now didn't have the integrity to point out it was wrong when it happened - but what annoyed me was the revelation of the phone ins from the CBBC repeat - which has a clear "phone lines now closed" message on - though to be fair, not clear enough and I personally think they should be completly edited out of repeats.


Finally, what annoyed me the most was the time dedicated to viewers complaining about their phone bill. I may have never phoned up myself, but I always feel that phone charges etc are made pretty clear by all involved (annoyingly too clear in some cases) - and all these quiz TV channels make it clear calls are charged whether selected or not.


Out of the 15-20 comments shown by Panorama, only one was of interest - the bloke who said he complained to ICSTIS back in January 2005 - and his complaint was ignored. That is the sort of thing they should have investigated further - who is regulating the regulators? (OFOF I suppose! )

All the Panorama investigation did was put light on the subject. Ok GMTV expose excluded but pretty much a pointless halfhour of mainly clarifications. No probing (they may have touched on them at the start but I missed that part however) into the Late night Premium Rate Quiz cons which annoyed me but then again I suppose their target programmes were far more important.

The Blue Peter scam seemed to be one of the worst of the bunch - handing the phone to a child backstage during a live show. There's no excuse for that, they ballsed up. Mark Thompson saying "we were desperately frantic on trying to keep the show on air" . Could they not perhaps have delayed the competition until the "glitch" was sorted out and just aired an apology? Somebody should have known, or apparently did know there was a fault but continued the competition. As for displaying the number in full on the repeat...well.

Now from all this, it seems somebody, or someone is clearly losing a lot of money and is running a mockery at the viewers expense. Clearly the a rulebook needs to be completely changed or someone needs a sacking. I don't totally blame the TV companies directly but it makes you wonder what type of people work for the telephone suppliers and what they're prepared to do.

Well, there are probably many arguements here, maybe its just me but the programme just didn't seem in depth enough.

I agree I don't have any sympathy for the people complaining about the 75p charges...they would have known that from the rules and regs displayed on screen.

The MD of GMTV, Paul Corley, was just interviewed on the show by John Stapleton, and frankly the wriggling he displayed will add further insult to injury IMO.

He was keen to portray Opera as the baddies - blaming "one or two people in a small telecoms company" and tried to place a large distance between Opera and GMTV.

Sure, it might have been Opera who instigated the fiddling, but ever heard the phrase "guilty by association"? These were GMTV-branded competitions, and since GMTV were happy to collect large cheques from Opera, they also had a responsibility to carry out regular audits and security checks into these competitions.

Ignorance is not a defence. This was a large scale fraud, not simply a few mistakes by "one or two people" as Paul Corley would have us believe. Opera are a big company, and so are GMTV. Both have researchers, lawyers and industry experts on their payrolls. Both should have known better.

Most laughable of all - when Corley was asked by Stapleton why eyebrows weren't raised by Opera previously being in trouble with ICSTIS 21 times, he said GMTV were blissfully unaware of the details of those complaints/adjudications.

Bad answer, mate. All the gory details about Opera were permanently available on the ICSTIS website for for the whole world to see. It's just taken me about 20 seconds to find this information.

Martin Frizzell was there from the start of GMTV as he was a reporter that came across from the old TVam.

There were other issues surrounding Saturday Kitchen that caused the ICSTIS investigation those being,

viewers being misled into phoning in to put questions to celebrity chefs “live” despite the programme having been recorded the previous week

viewers being invited to ring in to appear as a guest in the next edition of the show despite that programme being filmed minutes after the invitation was made.

And as for that idiot C4Fan on this forum suggesting staff and presenters be sacked. There is no suggestion that any GMTV staff / presenter or otherwise was complicit, in the same way that nobody actually blamed Richard and Judy for what happened in their name on their show. It's hysterical nonsense.

Who was the man from Ofcom on last nights Panorama? He seemed to be complete disinterested in the whole subject, like it wasn't something he thought they should have to get involved in. Very defensive.

Backs up my view that regulators, particularly in this case, are a bit of a joke.

Ps Agree about the camera work, entirely unneccesary.

I would like to know what proportion of the revenue created by these competitions goes the broadcaster. This dosesn't seem to have been highlighted in programs like Panorama.

Surely GMTV would have been receiving a handsome sum from Opera - if so this means IMO that they are as culpable as Opera and should have checked at every stage that the competitions held in their name were fair and properly excecuted. (This goes for all broadcasters who use contractors to provide these money-spinning items).

The stance they have taken [that they "knew nuuthing" (aka Manuel - Fawlty Towers)] doesn't hold water for me.

The best piece of advice for anyone desperate enough, silly enough, daft enough, * delete as applicable, to enter these phone in competition is to call is as soon as the competition starts, that way you’ll stand a chance of being entered.

As for these phone in quizzes, if the question is - “name a girls name”, phone in with the answer, Steve, Paul, Ian etc cos you’ll more likely to get a correct answer than if you call in with Emma, Jane etc.

Can someone please spell out to me, what is the point of routinely selecting competition entrants early? Who benefits from this? I have failed to hear this explained.

Generally speaking there is a 50/50 arrangement - though of course it varies from show to show. For example, with Brainteaser I think Endemol paid Five a fixed price to broadcast the show and kept the profits for themselves.


Also, I've been going on about this from the start - the Government are coining in 17.5% of revenue in VAT too - something completly ignored by even the likes of Panorama. I was beginning to think I might be wrong (never ), but everything I've read about premium rate numbers suggests VAT applies.

The only benefit is that it's easier if you're lazy. If lines close at midnight, but you pick at 9pm, you can get to bed early. There's no actual monetary benefit per se.

But systematically, day after day, week after week?

I was wondering if the telecoms operator only 'declares' the calls up to when they make the selections, then quietly takes the rest of the calls and pockets the cash for themselves.
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