In 2005, Ofcom found two broadcasters to be in breach of their licensing conditions for failure to maintain recordings of quiz programmes following complaints about their handling of competitions.
[9] On 18 February 2007, the Mail on Sunday reported that it had received leaked emails regarding the television programme Richard & Judy, which was broadcast nightly.
In each programme, a competition named You Say We Pay ran, in which viewers were invited to call a premium-rate phone number for the chance of being randomly selected to play a game with the presenters.
Following the allegations regarding Richard & Judy, ICSTIS began to investigate the BBC's cookery show Saturday Kitchen - also produced by Cactus TV - after it was alleged that nine editions of the programme had invited viewers to call a PRS - also provided by Eckoh - even though the broadcasts were pre-recorded and viewers' calls had no chance of being put through.
[13] On 1 March, ICSTIS chairman Sir Alistair Graham invited senior executives of the UK's leading broadcasters to a meeting to discuss the emerging allegations, stating: "My concern is that these problems are resulting in a loss of viewer trust in participation TV and in the premium-rate payment mechanism.
[16] Though the BBC and Channel 5 initially stated that they had no plans to suspend PRS,[17] Channel 5 did so on 8 March, reporting that on five separate occasions, after their programme BrainTeaser had failed to find a winning contestant to their competitions, broadcast fictitious names as "winners", including one incident where a member of the production team posed as a "winner".
[18] Channel 4 suspended PRS following revelations of a "glitch" preventing callers from being entered into a competition on the racing programme The Morning Line.
[20] On 13 March, Eckoh announced that they were referring the scandal to the police, following allegations that it mishandled votes relating to the sixth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here.
[21] The BBC revealed that two of its children's programmes were affected: Blue Peter had faked a competition winner after a technical fault prevented callers from getting through; and pre-recorded repeats of Smile had invited viewers to call in when they had no chance of getting through.
[22] Other ITV programmes that were named as being investigated included Soapstar Superstar, Dancing on Ice, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Gameshow Marathon and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.
[25] On 23 April, BBC's Panorama broadcast a show which investigated the use of PRS in multiple programmes, including GMTV and its competitions, which Opera Telecom provided.
Mark Thompson, Michael Grade, Andy Duncan and Jane Lighting were all in attendance to discuss their attempt to "restore public trust in broadcasting".
Described as "the most comprehensive review carried out into the use of PRS by any UK broadcaster", the report identified "serious or concerning issues in a limited number of ITV programmes".
This inquiry will seek to establish the root cause of the compliance issues which have emerged over recent weeks, and inform key decisions about protecting consumers.
[34][35][36] On one occasion, during the broadcast of Blue Peter, a child visiting the studio was asked by a researcher to pretend to be a competition winner, which they did.
[39]: 1.12 Ofcom opined that the programme-makers "showed their total contempt for ITV1’s audience"[39]: 1.20 in manipulating the votes in this way, and described their behaviour as "absolutely reprehensible".
"[54] After the Deloitte report was published in October 2007, Ant and Dec, who presented two of the affected programmes, expressed "disappointment" at the findings of the investigations, making it clear that they had "no idea" that compliance failures were occurring.
[59] As a result of the scandal and the subsequent investigations and sanctions that followed, Ofcom announced its intention to raise the maximum fine that they could impose on ITV and its regional networks, stating that the current guidelines did not "provide sufficient incentives for the licensees to maintain broadcasting standards for the protection of members of the public from the inclusion of offensive and harmful material".
Ofcom opined that: "ITV failed to properly implement and execute procedures that are fundamental to ensuring compliance with rules regarding the operation of its broadcast competitions and the relevant licence conditions."