Fraud, fraud and more fraud
The BBC's Panorama Page
Tonight's Panorama on BBC One investigated the whole world of television quizzes and competitions that employ the use of premium rate phone lines, and whilst the programmes implicated may not have been a huge surprise to readers of this blog, newspapers or the Media Guardian website, the total extent of the problem now seems much wider than previously reported.
The worrying thing is that Panorama managed to uncover without too much difficulty what seems to be a stack of evidence for systemic abuse of premium rate phone lines relating to competitions and quizzes over many years of their operation, for which legal experts seem to think that there's a good case for prosecuting individuals based on this evidence.
This is despite most major broadcasters carrying out their own supposedly thorough audits (often employing the use of external auditors) and even taking broadcasts off air whilst this happened. However it now seems fairly obvious that some broadcasters may not have wanted to delve too deep into the past for fear of what else might emerge from the woodwork.
Judging from tonight's report, it seems that the bulk of the problems relate to the companies that handle the phone lines for both the production companies and the broadcasters, which means that some broadcasters could potentially have been too trusting of these companies in their ability to deliver a legally compliant service.
Or maybe (perish the thought) that certain broadcasters might have at some point suspected that a problem is occuring but instead for whatever reason may decide to turn a 'blind eye' to any suspicion(s) that they may have, maybe on the basis that they earn too much revenue from these calls to start asking too many awkward questions.
And this isn't even taking into account the whole world of quiz TV channels and programming, with their usually obscure answers to what superficially appears to be simple questions, combined with misleading viewers into thinking that the odds of winning any prize are far better than they really are, for which the broadcasters are certainly culpable.
Plus in a few cases, the use of production staff or other known person(s) as fake "prize winners" either to maintain an illusion that nothing has gone wrong (in the case of Blue Peter), or much worse in that they wish to give the appearence that someone has won but without actually giving away any money. The latter is serious enough to demand a police investigation.
In short, one TV programme has achieved a more thorough investigation into certain aspects of the premium rate phone line industry than most broadcasters and their so-called "independent" audits. And given Ofcom's policy of only punishing broadcasters if evidence is available, it's no wonder that it benefits broadcasters to remain tight-lipped if they can.
Meanwhile Channel 4 is reluctant to take its investigation of the Richard and Judy Show's "You Say We Pay" competition further back in time than 2005, despite the fact that Panorama independently managed to obtain additional evidence of irregularities that date back over a year prior to this.
Plus a Richard and Judy viewer had contacted ICSTIS with their concerns over the show's premium rate competition over a year ago but got the distinct impression that they weren't at all interested in pursuing the allegations any further. All of this seems to point to major flaws in the current regulatory structure that inevitably leads to widespread abuse of the system.
So to summarise, we have evidence of widespread fraud, misuse and neglect relating to several high profile programmes along with substantial evidence of abuse relating to most if not all of the premium rate quiz industry.
And given the ease that instances of fraud can be committed behind closed doors, eg. picking a winner of a competition before the phone lines are closed, it would require incredibly tight levels of regulation to ensure that this never happens. That would require the use of several independent adjudicators, but even they could be deceived with appropriate trickery.
Indeed we can safely conclude that it really would be far easier to ban this sort of competition altogether in order to remove all uncertainty over such calls, since there are far too many variables involved (broadcaster, production company, production staff, call centre staff, telecoms company) and too much at stake for all of this to be trusted with self-regulation.
Another approach could be for the Gambling Commission to reclassify all of this as a lottery, with a percentage of the proceeds going to charity. But that won't do anything to remove the risk of fraud, since it's much easier to audit the sale of lottery tickets or betting shop/casino takings than regulating several competitions with numerous variables involved.
But there's another important issue to be addressed which isn't a financial one, namely the relationship between broadcasters and their viewers. After watching tonight's Panorama you could be forgiven for thinking that broadcasters don't care about their viewers as long as they watch their programmes and provide a source of easy income.
In most cases, it now seems that you would be right.
