Phone-in row hits Sky

Satdude

Phone-in row hits Sky

Dean Holdsworth: allowed back on the show after having been evicted.

BSkyB has been dragged into the premium rate phone-in furore after a voting irregularity in Cirque de Celebrité led to the reality programme inviting an evicted contestant back to the show.

The "technical fault", in the Sunday night phone vote on the programme where celebrities learn circus tricks meant that some votes did not count toward the final result.

As a result ex-footballer Dean Holdsworth, who left the show as a result of the vote, has been invited to rejoin the programme.

"Sky is taking immediate action to remedy the situation," the broadcaster said in a statement.

"Voting in Cirque de Celebrité is all about enhancing the viewer experience and all revenues received by Sky as a result of the votes on the show go to charity. We would like to apologise to our viewers."

Sky is also offering all viewers who voted a refund, with the broadcaster saying it will match the amount of money made in revenue with a charity donation of its own. Sky is charging 25p per call.

The voting error, while a one-off, will be an embarrassment to the Sky chief executive, James Murdoch, who only last month was scoring public relations points over the scandals that had hit rival broadcasters.

In an interview he described premium-rate phone line quizzes as "pretty sleazy" and said that he was glad the satellite broadcaster had avoided them because they were "easy to abuse".

"We took the view that they [premium-rate quizzes] were taking advantage of people and that our customers deserved better than that," he told the Royal Television Society's magazine, Television.

"Premium-rate quiz stuff always felt grubby, trying to get an extra nickel out of everyone. We didn't feel comfortable with it," he said.

"We knew we could make a lot of money out of it, but these kinds of programmes are very easy to abuse. They just seem unfair."

Regards Satdude.