Indian television viewers, who like to take part in phone-in shows, beware. For, if it can happen to British viewers, it can happen to you too. So, read this carefully:
Over the past one year, some of Britain’s most respected TV channels, including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, have been found guilty of deceiving their viewers and forced to pay millions of pounds in fines.
The deceptions ranged from fixing winners in phone-in competitions to encouraging people to continue voting through premium rate phone lines even though the contest had already closed. There were cases of winners being chosen even before the voting started; votes being rigged; studio-guests being persuaded to pose as callers when a technical glitch prevented genuine viewers from calling ; and producers resorting to gimmicks to create artificial “tension”.
In the most recent scandal, ITV was fined an unprecedented £5.7 million by the media regulator Ofcom last week for “seriously and repeatedly misleading” its audience on more than 80 separate occasions over the past four years. The finding coincided with the disclosure that the vote on one of ITV’s most popular programmes was rigged in favour of its two high-profile presenters — Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, popular known as Art and Dec — while the real winner was comedian Catherine Tate.
It is estimated that, over four years, viewers collectively spent £7.8 million in making premium rate calls to shows they had no chance of winning. The scandal inspired a cartoon in The Sunday Telegraph showing two Labour activists approaching a polling station and one saying to the other: “The only way we can win this by-election is if ITV organises it.”
In a scathing report, Ofcom portrayed a culture of unethical practices at ITV with staff members who protested being “firmly sat upon”. Ofcom chairman Ed Richards said there was “institutionalised failure within ITV that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct on mass audience programmes.”
ITV’s boss Michael Grade admitted that there had been “serious breaches” of trust and “gross editorial error of judgment” but insisted that new procedures had been put in place to prevent such things happening again.
Meanwhile, BBC, which has previously admitted to misleading viewers, faced more embarrassment when it emerged that it pocketed £106,000 ( raised through phone-in fundraising shows) that it should have distributed to charities.
It was also revealed that votes of thousands of viewers in last year’s Eurovision Song Contest were not counted. This happened because a presenter “mistakenly” invited people to start voting before the lines officially opened. Viewers who called during that period were charged for the calls but their votes were excluded.
Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, was furious and threatened “disciplinary action”. He ordered the corporation to pay £106,000 to charities with interest.
As concern grew, there were calls for premium rate phone-in programmes to be scrapped. Channel 4 has already done so after being fined £1.5 million over allegations of deception and there is pressure on others to follow suit.
Industry insiders say that such malpractices are inevitable in a climate of cut-throat competition with TV channels prepared to do anything to pull in viewers and attract advertising. Even the BBC, which doesn’t depend on commercial advertising, has been accused of chasing ratings to justify its licence fee.
As The Independent noted in an editorial: “It is obvious that there is something rotten in the ethics of television broadcasting. Dishonesty has been regarded as acceptable so long as it is done in the cause of keeping the show on the road.”
The potential for such deception is even greater in a country like India where there is no independent regulatory mechanism and a totally unregulated TV industry is engaged in a fierce 24/7 battle for TRPs. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that there has been no scandal as yet, but with competition growing and the ratings battle likely to turn nasty an ITV-style disaster is simply waiting to happen unless credible safeguards are put in place — and quickly. Until then, viewers can only hope and pray that broadcasters will not abuse their trust.
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Stereotyping, BBC style
While on the subject of television, here’s the story of a young Muslim woman who was invited to take part in a BBC series called Women in Black but was turned down when the producers discovered that she did not fit the stereotyped image of a Muslim woman.
Recalling how she turned out to be the “wrong kind of Muslim for the TV”, Huma Qureshi wrote in The Observer that although the programme makers claimed they wanted to “shatter stereotypes and show the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman” when she met them they were a “bit concerned” about her appearance.
“‘Your dress is quite Western,’ they said ruefully. I was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top…… but I was hardly scantily clad. So much for the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman; turns out what the I really wanted was an authentic, well-covered one instead. You see, burkas made good TV,” she wrote.
The BBC, she gathered, wasn’t interested in the story of a normal Muslim girl where “cultures don’t clash” because it didn’t make interesting TV!
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Phone-in TV shows are a scandal
Over the past one year, some of Britain’s most respected TV channels, including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, have been found guilty of deceiving their viewers and forced to pay millions of pounds in fines.
The deceptions ranged from fixing winners in phone-in competitions to encouraging people to continue voting through premium rate phone lines even though the contest had already closed. There were cases of winners being chosen even before the voting started; votes being rigged; studio-guests being persuaded to pose as callers when a technical glitch prevented genuine viewers from calling ; and producers resorting to gimmicks to create artificial “tension”.
In the most recent scandal, ITV was fined an unprecedented £5.7 million by the media regulator Ofcom last week for “seriously and repeatedly misleading” its audience on more than 80 separate occasions over the past four years. The finding coincided with the disclosure that the vote on one of ITV’s most popular programmes was rigged in favour of its two high-profile presenters — Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, popular known as Art and Dec — while the real winner was comedian Catherine Tate.
It is estimated that, over four years, viewers collectively spent £7.8 million in making premium rate calls to shows they had no chance of winning. The scandal inspired a cartoon in The Sunday Telegraph showing two Labour activists approaching a polling station and one saying to the other: “The only way we can win this by-election is if ITV organises it.”
In a scathing report, Ofcom portrayed a culture of unethical practices at ITV with staff members who protested being “firmly sat upon”. Ofcom chairman Ed Richards said there was “institutionalised failure within ITV that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct on mass audience programmes.”
ITV’s boss Michael Grade admitted that there had been “serious breaches” of trust and “gross editorial error of judgment” but insisted that new procedures had been put in place to prevent such things happening again.
Meanwhile, BBC, which has previously admitted to misleading viewers, faced more embarrassment when it emerged that it pocketed £106,000 ( raised through phone-in fundraising shows) that it should have distributed to charities.
It was also revealed that votes of thousands of viewers in last year’s Eurovision Song Contest were not counted. This happened because a presenter “mistakenly” invited people to start voting before the lines officially opened. Viewers who called during that period were charged for the calls but their votes were excluded.
Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, was furious and threatened “disciplinary action”. He ordered the corporation to pay £106,000 to charities with interest.
As concern grew, there were calls for premium rate phone-in programmes to be scrapped. Channel 4 has already done so after being fined £1.5 million over allegations of deception and there is pressure on others to follow suit.
Industry insiders say that such malpractices are inevitable in a climate of cut-throat competition with TV channels prepared to do anything to pull in viewers and attract advertising. Even the BBC, which doesn’t depend on commercial advertising, has been accused of chasing ratings to justify its licence fee.
As The Independent noted in an editorial: “It is obvious that there is something rotten in the ethics of television broadcasting. Dishonesty has been regarded as acceptable so long as it is done in the cause of keeping the show on the road.”
The potential for such deception is even greater in a country like India where there is no independent regulatory mechanism and a totally unregulated TV industry is engaged in a fierce 24/7 battle for TRPs. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that there has been no scandal as yet, but with competition growing and the ratings battle likely to turn nasty an ITV-style disaster is simply waiting to happen unless credible safeguards are put in place — and quickly. Until then, viewers can only hope and pray that broadcasters will not abuse their trust.
*** *** ***
Stereotyping, BBC style
While on the subject of television, here’s the story of a young Muslim woman who was invited to take part in a BBC series called Women in Black but was turned down when the producers discovered that she did not fit the stereotyped image of a Muslim woman.
Recalling how she turned out to be the “wrong kind of Muslim for the TV”, Huma Qureshi wrote in The Observer that although the programme makers claimed they wanted to “shatter stereotypes and show the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman” when she met them they were a “bit concerned” about her appearance.
“‘Your dress is quite Western,’ they said ruefully. I was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top…… but I was hardly scantily clad. So much for the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman; turns out what the I really wanted was an authentic, well-covered one instead. You see, burkas made good TV,” she wrote.
The BBC, she gathered, wasn’t interested in the story of a normal Muslim girl where “cultures don’t clash” because it didn’t make interesting TV!
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Phone-in TV shows are a scandal
