BBC fined for phone-ins no one could win

The Times December 19, 2008

The BBC has been fined £95,000 for faking phone-in competitions and accused by Ofcom of holding back information from its investigations.

The regulator said that there had been deliberate breaches of broadcasting rules in radio shows hosted by Dermot O’Leary and Tony Blackburn. Phone-in competitions were broadcast in prerecorded programmes as if they were live but entrants could not win.

In July the BBC was fined £400,000 over other phone-in deceptions. Yesterday’s judgment disclosed that it had not immediately admitted to the previous breaches of broadcasting rules in O’Leary’s Radio 2 show, or Blackburn’s programme on BBC London 94.9, because it thought them “less serious instances”.

Ofcom said that it was “a matter of serious concern” that the BBC “had taken a decision to judge the serious-ness of the case, despite knowing at the time that it involved breaches of the code, with which the broadcaster has a statutory obligation to comply”.

The programmes involved production staff contacting members of the public who had previously had correspondence with the shows, asking them to enter prerecorded contests.

Eight editions of O’Leary’s show in 2006 featured prerecorded contests that listeners could not enter, for which the BBC was fined £70,000. Blackburn’s BBC London show, also on a Saturday afternoon, featured five similar occurrences between December 2005 and December 2006, incurring a £25,000 fine.

The regulator said: “Ofcom was very concerned by the repeated, premeditated and deliberate decisions to include competitions in prerecorded programmes broadcast ‘as live’. The code breaches constituted a significant breakdown in the relationship of trust between a long-established public service broadcaster and its audience.”

Both shows must broadcast an apology tomorrow, the BBC Trust ruled. The BBC said: “We welcome Ofcom’s recognition of the action taken to address these issues and that neither the BBC nor any member of staff made any money from these lapses.”