Massive fine for ITV

chris

The market was expecting a fine of £4m or so. The fine levied out against ITV, the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster, was a massive £13.5m ($26m) for numerous breaches of Ofcom’s premium rate telephony rules. It is the UK’s biggest-ever fine for any broadcaster, dwarfing the £2m fine for GMTV last year for similar breaches.

Worse, perhaps, is that news also emerged that another major comedy award was “fixed” back in 2005, when the rightful winners of a viewer poll – and BBC stars - were ignored in favour of ITV talent (Ant & Dec).

The £13.5m total penalty comes in the shape of £5.75m in fines, plus viewer compensation. Alongside these transgressions there was also a fine for ITV2, a digital channel, of £275,000 for 28 transgressions when viewers were not informed that voting lines had closed.

Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards says: "This was a thorough set of investigations which uncovered institutionalised failure within ITV that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct on mass audience programmes."

ITV executive chairman Michael Grade says: "Ofcom’s announcement today is an appropriate moment to restate ITV’s unreserved apology to the public for breaches that took place between 2003 and January 2007."





Source: Rapid TV News

Channel Hopper

Still only a tenth of the shareholder profits, not a word about the time that it took for ITCSIS to start the ball rolling, and many of the ITV programme providers still use a premium rate number for audience voting

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"