The phone vote scandal continues, with a new report revealing numerous ITV shows have misled viewers and pocketed millions of pounds. The X Factor, Saturday Night Takeaway, Gameshow Marathon, Soapstar Superstar, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here -- they're all in the firing line.
The probe unearthed the usual misdemeanour: viewers being encouraged to vote on reality TV shows and enter competitins, despite winners already being chosen.
Just weeks ago, a similar investigation by Ofcom resulted in breakfast show GMTV being fined £2 million for cheating its viewers out of £20 million. Yeah, you do the math. Over 3 years, 65 million GMTV viewers called in for competitions, but 25 million had no chance of ever winning!
And that's just one show. Think how many millions have been conned out of viewers on the primetime shows mentioned above? The report only goes back 2 years, too -- and I suspect viewers were being tricked out of their cash years before 2005. Scandalous.
ITV are promising to refund everyone their cash. Well, on competitions running from 05-07 most likely, and only if you've kept all your phone bills as proof. If you haven't -- well, tough.
Personally, I've never voted on any TV series in my life. Even back when it was a novelty. The process always seemed too vague and open to abuse to me. In the old days (erm, 10 years ago), if you rang up to enter a competition, you spoke to a real person. That gave some semblence of professionalism and reality to what you were doing.
I still don't know how a text vote actually works. How is it registered? How do they get your money? How do they "randomly" choose a winner from the thousands (sometimes millions) of voters?
Text votes are just a faceless and anonymous evolution. They're faster, more lucrative, and production companies don't have to pay telephonists now! They're great news for telethons like Comic Relief and Children In Need, but bad news for viewers wanting Myleene Klass to win if some exec prefers Matt Willis.
Yes, apparently the impact has been so huge, it even influenced winners of reality shows! I hope ITV work it all out, recalculate the votes, then go around and right some wrongs: dethrone Carol Thatcher as Queen Of The Jungle, tell Anthony Cotton he didn't win Soapstar Superstar and can't sing in public, and let Ray Quinn release "Bleeding Love"...
Well, maybe not that last one. Leona Lewis wasn't rigged, okay? But all this does explain Shane Ward.
The probe unearthed the usual misdemeanour: viewers being encouraged to vote on reality TV shows and enter competitins, despite winners already being chosen.
Just weeks ago, a similar investigation by Ofcom resulted in breakfast show GMTV being fined £2 million for cheating its viewers out of £20 million. Yeah, you do the math. Over 3 years, 65 million GMTV viewers called in for competitions, but 25 million had no chance of ever winning!
And that's just one show. Think how many millions have been conned out of viewers on the primetime shows mentioned above? The report only goes back 2 years, too -- and I suspect viewers were being tricked out of their cash years before 2005. Scandalous.
ITV are promising to refund everyone their cash. Well, on competitions running from 05-07 most likely, and only if you've kept all your phone bills as proof. If you haven't -- well, tough.
Personally, I've never voted on any TV series in my life. Even back when it was a novelty. The process always seemed too vague and open to abuse to me. In the old days (erm, 10 years ago), if you rang up to enter a competition, you spoke to a real person. That gave some semblence of professionalism and reality to what you were doing.
I still don't know how a text vote actually works. How is it registered? How do they get your money? How do they "randomly" choose a winner from the thousands (sometimes millions) of voters?
Text votes are just a faceless and anonymous evolution. They're faster, more lucrative, and production companies don't have to pay telephonists now! They're great news for telethons like Comic Relief and Children In Need, but bad news for viewers wanting Myleene Klass to win if some exec prefers Matt Willis.
Yes, apparently the impact has been so huge, it even influenced winners of reality shows! I hope ITV work it all out, recalculate the votes, then go around and right some wrongs: dethrone Carol Thatcher as Queen Of The Jungle, tell Anthony Cotton he didn't win Soapstar Superstar and can't sing in public, and let Ray Quinn release "Bleeding Love"...
Well, maybe not that last one. Leona Lewis wasn't rigged, okay? But all this does explain Shane Ward.
