Many British TV programmes have staged phoney phone-ins, rigged competitions and overcharged premium-rate callers. Could the same happen here, asks Conor Pope
British television is in turmoil this weekend following a series of increasingly embarrassing revelations about phone-in competitions and viewer vote-driven programming offered by its terrestrial stations. ITV and Channel Five have been forced to completely suspend their premium-rate phone services at a cost of more than £2m (€3m) a week while Channel 4 and the BBC have had to admit to misleading their viewers over competition entries.
If the British system is in such disarray, Irish consumers could be forgiven for questioning the integrity of our own premium-rate call-ins. RTÉ, which runs about 60 programmes annually with premium-rate comment lines, competitions and voting, is absolutely confident its systems are working correctly. RegTel, the independent regulator that oversees the content and promotion of premium-rate services in Ireland, echoes the national broadcaster's optimism and says that differing business models in Ireland and Britain make it less likely the system here will be found wanting.
The great phone-in scandal began in the most unlikely of places - on Richard and Judy, the almost entirely wholesome Channel 4 show. It emerged the pair were encouraging viewers to spend £1 (€1.47) a time on phoning the show to win a place in their daily quiz long after the company managing the phones had selected the entrants. Information leaked to newspapers showed that on February 5th, 32,000 people rang the "You Say, We Pay" competition line after the winners had already been selected.
The story was given legs hours later when it was revealed that BBC1's "live" Saturday Kitchen show wasn't quite as live as it appeared. People spending 25p (37c) on calls to the station to win a place on the following week's show were wasting their money as the show was actually pre-recorded and would be filmed just hours later.
THEN IT WAS ITV's turn. It emerged that 1.3 million viewers who voted during last December's X-Factor final using the red button on their digital TV remote were charged 15p (22c) more than they should have been, a total of almost £200,000 (€297,000).
This was, most people accept, done in error. ITV's phone-in quiz shows are, however, considerably more manipulative and the station knows exactly what it is doing with them. While Glitterball - the most popular of the shows - calls itself a "world of winning", the only real winner has been ITV, which has managed to cajole thousands of people into regularly paying through the nose to play games they have little chance of winning.
ITV earns more than £500,000 (€737,000) every week from people it promises will experience "the razzle, the dazzle, the glitz, the glamour and the cash" of the games through trying to connect at up to €1 a time in an effort to have some vacuous hosts ask them impossible questions.
Today, however, ITV is more concerned about audits than glitz. It has been forced to suspend all its premium-rate telephone services - worth an estimated £1.5 million (€2.2 million) a week - to allow Deloitte carry out an independent review of the systems used on all relevant programmes over the last two years.
On Thursday, Channel Five became the latest broadcaster to suspend all its programming involving premium-rate telephone services when it was forced to admit it had made up the names of winners on its Brainteaser quiz show if no real person had got the answers right. The show, made by Endemol, also had its own staff pretending to be winners live on air.
After the slew of scandals, the police are investigating and Britain's industry regulator has said it is to introduce a licensing regime for providers of services that charge premium call rates in participation television in a bid to restore confidence.
ITV's executive chairman, Michael Grade, says the overcharging is an "industry-wide problem" and broadcasters had to be "absolutely certain that we are transparent, that the procedures are immaculate and that what you see is what you are getting".
If, as Grade says, it is an industry-wide problem in the UK, surely this is something our own broadcasting industry should be concerned about? RTÉ doesn't think so. Executives at the station have been following unfolding events in Britain, but have no plans to carry out a similar audit of its systems to the one currently underway at ITV.
When asked by The Irish Times how much money it made from the premium-rate phone services it has been operating since 2002, the national broadcaster declined to answer. It said it was unprepared to make public its income from short messaging service (SMS) and interactive voice response (IVR), describing such information as "commercially sensitive".
All it is prepared to reveal is its revenue from content, merchandising and related sales, which includes revenue from telephoning and texting. In 2005 it made €8,591,000.
DESPITE THIS LACK of transparency, the broadcaster says consumers here have no need to worry. It states that on "key programmes and high-profile voting events" an independent auditor is contracted to monitor proceedings. "RTÉ follows a very strict policy regarding SMS and IVR voting and competitions and as such is confident that the mechanisms in place fully comply [ with] both internal and Regtel guidelines," it says.
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they, cynics might be forgiven for adding.
Pat Breen, the head of RegTel, says he is fully aware of the situation unfolding in Britain but is confident similar circumstances could not arise in the Republic. "I have no information at all that anything like that is happening in Ireland and I am optimistic that everything here is above board," he says.
"The scenarios here and in Britain are completely different. There are shows and even stations there that are entirely driven by the revenue from premium-rate services. That is not the case here. And there are circumstances where people can be left hanging on the line for a long time and pay a premium for it. That is not allowed in the Irish market."