BBC axe all phone and interactive competitions

By on July 18, 2007 in Services

Link: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | BBC to suspend phone competitions

Hot on the heels of the scathing report by Ofcom into broadcasters’ usage of premium SMS and telephone services – but apparently unrelated - the BBC has announced plans to suspended all phone-related, interactive and online competitions with virtually immediate effect.

All phone-related competitions on BBC TV and radio will cease from 0000 BST on Thursday, while interactive and online competitions will be taken down as soon as possible.

The BBC Trust said it was “deeply concerned that significant failures of control and compliance within the BBC have compromised the BBC’s values of accuracy and honesty”.

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  • http://www.itagg.com steve procter

    good idea. and after that production company accused the Queen of doing something she tells us she didn’t do, we should ban all documentaries. And the weatherman got it wrong the other day and caused me to ruin a jumper when it rained unexpectedly, so lets ban weather reports. And the news these days frankly upsets me so…ban the news.

    Mind you that other 21st century solution to everything of having government investigations really aint much better…

    So…Investigation or Ban? You decide, text ITFIXESNOTHING followed by the word INVESTIGATION or BAN to 60300*.

    steve/itagg.com

    * smallprint: Texts cost standard rate. We will not pass your number to Rich & Judy for use in a tv show competition. All entries are up to you and you must ask the person who pays the bill if it is ok for you to go and play outside with your pink waterproof mobile for half an hour before teatime. This sms service is run by a company who abides by all the rules and it is your own daft fault if you enter 73 times thinking that for some reason I wrote above that there was a prize of a Bentley for the person who texts the most.

  • http://www.rfmo.com loulou

    Frankly, I’m not surprised at the BBC pulling a fast one with their production team falsifying calls in competitions. Anyone who has spent 5 minutes in live media production (theatre, tv, radio) will know that technology and live to air are not happy bedfellows – they would always have had a contingency in place if the live telephone communication went loopy. When things are live, you are on such tight deadlines that failures have to be bluffed out. You can’t simply suspend a live broadcast and wait until a problem is fixed.

    What boggles belief is that the BBC could (especially with the “Relief” items “won” by production members) have made the calls sound altruistic – ie, the runner on the other end of the phone could have said, “oh, no, please donate my prize to the charity too” and the sheep who watch this toot would have simply thought “my my, what a nice fellow”.

    Or (and this obviously wouldn’t happen as the BBC aren’t great at admitting mistakes until they are under suspicion) they could have admitted to a problem and announced the winners would be on their web site after the show.

    But no, let’s all ban and be damned!

    The real problem is, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that the majority of these text/phone competitions (and text-in in general) are aimed at those members of society who are, erm, intellectually challenged.

    Or, kids who do before they think (as a mother of two, gosh knows they do).

    Namby pamby liberalism dictates we must protect the proletariate who can’t calculate that texting in 1000 times to support your favourite new plucked-from-the checkout-teenage-pop-warbler-singing-songs-from-the-shows at 50p a time will mean you (or mummy or daddy) are presented with a huge mobile bill at the end of the month.

    Gosh, don’t ya just love the UK these days?

  • http://www.itagg.com steve procter

    Do we really think they are going to ditch all these programmes that make exceedingly large amounts of cash and totally rely on a voting mechanism? of course not. They will all be back. But this time there will be 37 extra pages of ICSTIS and OFCOM rules for people like us to follow. It is the mobile solutions providers who will suffer. There will be so much new red tape that it will make building and running a text voting system the most painful experience bar having all your teeth pulled out by a gorilla.

    So it will all go on as before. Namby pamby liberalism (great quote loolou!!)will have hurt the business providers behind it all. But the lovely brain dead people who enter these competitions 70 times will be left to carry on as before. It’s a real shame the effort couldn’t instead be put into educating these people that Countryfile and Question Time are far better programmes to be watching than “I’m a Z List Celeb Get Me a Recording Contract”. But hey, education doesn’t seem to be a priority these days…

    …ramble ramble…

    steve/itagg.com

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