Biddy Baxter 'appalled' by Blue Peter phone-in row

One minute you may think it's all over, but it seems that premium phone line-related scandals continue to emerge like skeletons tumbling out of a large cupboard, and in their wake appear to be demolishing the entire credibility of British broadcasting. Case in point being the latest revelation involving the usually squeaky clean Blue Peter.

Nowadays TV producers work in a highly competitive environment, and this is especially true of children's television. Blue Peter is a long-standing institution which has yet to succumb to viewers switching off in droves (as was the case with Top of the Pops), but this in turn places even more intense pressure on producers to deliver a smooth-running show.

This new example appears to be more a case of trying to make things appear to run smoothly as opposed to a malicious deception. If you enter a popular competition, the odds of winning first prize are extremely remote, so the producers probably thought that they could get away without choosing a random phone call when there was a technical hitch.

Modern broadcasting seems to be centered around the premise that hardly anything goes wrong, and if something does go wrong then it's more important to hide/ignore the fact than admit that there's a problem. And since the bulk of the phone call cost was going to charity, presumably it was felt at the time that the competition had done its intended job.

Since children in particular seem to revel in cockups of this nature (it certainly wouldn't be a turnoff for them), we can perhaps also assume that the Blue Peter producers just didn't want to the hassle/embarassment of sorting out a new winner and/or giving potential refunds for phone calls.

Maybe there needs to be more people like Biddy Baxter working in the television industry these days; her style of management may not have been to everyone's taste but it obviously helped to make Blue Peter the public and widely-revered institution it has become over the years.

One conclusion we can draw from this and other related problems is that the producers didn't properly take into account the risks and implications of using premium rate phone calls, and it was most likely down to the simple fact that "everyone else is using premium rate phone lines" plus up to that point there hadn't been any major scandal(s) relating to their use.

Maybe one day people within the media industry will stop blindly copying each other without thinking for themselves whether or not what they are copying is appropriate or wise to do under the circumstances, whether it's copying reality TV formats, relying on the same presenters or the use of intrusive continuity such as on-screen captions during programmes.

But don't hold your breath.