BBC fined over unfair competitions

10:16am Thursday 31st July 2008

The BBC has been fined £400,000 by media regulator Ofcom for faking winners and misleading audiences in viewer and listener competitions.

The penalty, for flagship shows such as Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need as well as the Jo Whiley and Russell Brand radio shows, is a record for the corporation.

The regulator said: "Ofcom considered that these breaches of the (broadcasting) code were very serious.

"In each of these cases the BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly."

The watchdog said that in some cases ruled on Wednesday, programme-makers knew in advance that the audience had no chance of winning the competitions that they were going to broadcast but went ahead with them anyway.

It said: "The investigations found that, in some cases, the production team had taken premeditated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning.

"In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems made up the names of winners.

"Overall, Ofcom found that the BBC failed to have adequate management oversight of its compliance and training procedures to ensure that the audience was not misled.

"Although viewers and listeners paid the cost of their calls to take part in these competitions, the BBC did not receive any money from the entries."

A member of the production team posed as a winner on a phone-in competition on Comic Relief on BBC1 in March last year, and a similar scenario featured on a Sport Relief phone-in in July 2006. On Children in Need, in 2005, the name of a fictitious winner was read out on air.

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