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BBC admits 'error' in keeping money raised for charity from phone-in shows
The UN food agency on Friday said it will resume aid flights to cyclone-struck Myanmar despite the military government's seizure of deliveries at the airport in the capital Yangon.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:56 May 9, 2008
London: The BBC admitted yesterday it had failed to pay 106,000 pounds, (Dh763,200) which should have gone to charity from viewers' calls to premium rate phonelines, the latest such scandal to hit broadcasters.
The BBC Trust, the body which oversees the broadcaster, ordered the corporation to apologise on air to viewers and to take disciplinary action against some staff.
An independent review found that Audiocall, a subsidiary company, had retained all money raised from telephone calls when voting lines were closed, including sums that should have gone to charity.
The practice, which took place from October 2005 until September 2007, involved small individual sums, but collectively the amount that should have gone to charity was £106,000. That was the equivalent of 1.3 per cent of all money raised for charity by the BBC using premium phonelines in that period.
Record fine
"The sums due to charity have now been repaid with interest. We would like to apologise to viewers and to the charities for this serious error," the BBC said in a statement.
One of the shows affected by the error was the 2007 Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up when there had been a very large "spike" in calls when the voting lines were closed, the report said. The BBC Trust decided that all money, £6,090, generated as a result of that mistake should go to charity.
The announcement comes a day after media watchdog Ofcom handed ITV a record fine of £5.68 million for cheating viewers over phone-in competitions on some of its most popular shows. Viewers had been encouraged to call premium rate phonelines to enter competitions they could never win, or to cast votes that were never counted, the watchdog said.
ITV also revealed that entertainment stars Ant and Dec had wrongly been awarded the People's Choice Award at ITV's 2005 British Comedy Awards when comedian Catherine Tate had actually won the viewer telephone vote.
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