BBC admits holding on to charity money

Reuters - Friday, May 9 01:58 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - The BBC admitted on Friday it had failed to pay 106,000 pounds 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 pounds.

That was the equivalent of 1.3 percent of all money raised for charity by the BBC using premium rate phonelines in that period.

"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 pounds, 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 pounds 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.

Friday's revelations are another embarrassment to the BBC which has been trying to restore its image and regain trust after it was found guilty of a series of scandals in which viewers were misled.

The BBC was forced to apologise to Queen Elizabeth last year for implying in a documentary trailer that she had stormed out of a photo-shoot with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

It also revealed competitions had been rigged and that producers of children's show "Blue Peter" had even ignored a phone-in vote to decide the name of the programme's new kitten.

"Since the first editorial failing came to light in 2007, the BBC has acted swiftly and not shied away from providing full information about its mistakes and errors," the BBC Trust said.

"It also gave a firm commitment to put its house in order. The Trust believes there is real evidence of this commitment being met."

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

• Email Story
• IM Story
• Printable View
• Blog This

Recommend this article

Sponsored Links

(What’s this?)