Articles | Ofcom fines ITV £5.67m

Record £5.67m fine for ITV

Published: Thursday, 8 May 2008, 12:01PM

ITV has been fined a record £5.67 million by Ofcom for abusing premium rate phone services in viewer competitions.

The media regulator said the penalty "reflects not only the seriousness of ITV's failures but also their repeated nature".

The regulator investigated after a report found "serious editorial issues" within three ITV programmes - Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Ant and Dec's Gameshow Marathon and Soapstar Superstar.

The penalty dwarfs the previous record £2 million GMTV received, which is 75 per cent owned by ITV. GMTV charged viewers up to £40 million to enter competitions they had no chance of winning.

ITV could have been fined up to 70 million - 5 per cent of its commercial revenue. The broadcaster made £7.8 million from uncounted votes and some ten million telephone calls were affected.

"Ofcom's announcement today is an appropriate moment to restate ITV's unreserved apology to the public for breaches that took place between 2003 and January 2007," Michael Grade, Executive Chairman of ITV plc, said.

"We welcome Ofcom's recognition of the 'wide ranging and timely' steps voluntarily undertaken by ITV.

"ITV has gone further than any other broadcaster in instigating an independent, systematic and comprehensive investigation into all allegations around premium rate services in its programmes. We believe that Ofcom's scrutiny of the evidence we provided will reassure viewers and rebuild the public's trust in ITV.

"Since the publication of Deloitte's findings, ITV has totally re-engineered its editorial, compliance and training procedures to safeguard against any recurrence of such breaches of trust.

"We have also taken a number of disciplinary measures. Anyone working with or for ITV going forward is in no doubt of the standards expected and the consequences if they fall short."

Deloitte found that in Saturday Night Takeaway, competition entrants for the Jiggy Bank competition were not chosen at random but selected if they lived within an hour of a chosen location and would make good TV.

In Gameshow Marathon, the winner of the Prize Mountain was also not chosen at random, but selected if researchers thought they sounded "lively" and would be more entertaining on screen.

In Soapstar Superstar, votes for celebrities to be put up for eviction were ignored in favour of the production team's choice.

Despite being credited as executive producers on Saturday Night Takeaway and Gameshow Marathon, Ant and Dec said they had not been aware of the phone-in scandals.

In December last year, Channel 4 was fined £1.5 million for misconduct involving phone-in competitions on shows Richard And Judy and Deal Or No Deal.

Ofcom said it had uncovered "institutionalised failure within ITV" and programme-makers showed "total disregard" for their own terms and conditions and broadcasting codes.