BBC suspends phone competitions

The BBC has announced that it will suspend all phone-in quizzes and interactive competitions, following a series of editorial errors.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson made the announcement after "serious editorial breaches" were uncovered during a recent audit of the corporation.

These included fake winners in phone-in competitions on Comic Relief, CBBC show TMi, Sport Relief, Children In Need and The Liz Kershaw Show on BBC6 Music.

Mr Thompson said: "Nothing matters more than trust and fair dealing with our audiences. The vast majority of the 400,000 hours of BBC output each year, on television, radio and online is accurate, fair and complies with our stringent editorial standards.

"However, a number of programmes have failed to meet these high standards. This is totally unacceptable. It is right that we are open with the public when we have fallen short and that we demonstrate that we take this very seriously indeed. The behaviour of a small number of production staff who have passed themselves off as viewers and listeners must stop. We must now swiftly put our house in order.

Mr Thompson announced that a programme of editorial training focusing on the issue of honesty with audiences will also be implemented and that all 16,500 programmes and content staff will attend a new mandatory training programme, Safeguarding Trust, from the Autumn, which will "emphasise the absolute imperative to understand and comply with all of the BBC's values and editorial standards".

The BBC also announced that a full and independent inquiry would be held into the documentary trailer which appeared to show the Queen storming out of a photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The BBC was forced to apologise over the clip and it was later revealed that the video had been edited out of sequence. Production company RDF Media accepted the blame for the error, saying it was "guilty of a serious error of judgement".

The BBC said that the report about the incident would be submitted by the Director-General to the BBC Trust in the Autumn and the findings would be made public.

A statement said: "We will work with RDF to understand the steps they propose to ensure there is no chance of a repetition of the incident involving the Queen. Until that is clear and we have the findings of the independent inquiry, we will pause in commissioning any new programmes from them."

The announcement followed the publication of an Ofcom report which said that there has been a "systematic failure" in the way that television broadcasters operate their premium rate phone services.

The media regulator launched an investigation following a series of scandals involving phone-in competition on a range of programmes.

Ofcom has already imposed fines on two programmes - Five's 'Brainteaser' and the BBC's 'Blue Peter' - over compliance failures with phone-in competitions.

Ofcom said that a number of other investigations are on-going and would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with several of them expected to be concluded over the summer.

The report, led by Richard Ayre, said that there was a "widespread lack of understanding among major broadcasters" of the viewers' interests as they become viewer-consumers interacting and conducting transactions.

The report recommended that broadcasters' licences be changed so that they can "attract clear and broad responsibility for the use of PRS - and other means of consumer contact".

(KMcA)