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BBC fined over O’Leary and Blackburn fake phone ins

By | Published on Friday 19 December 2008

The BBC has been fined £95,000 by media regulator OfCom for 13 dodgy quizzes broadcast on Radio 2 and BBC London in 2005 and 2006, on shows hosted by those kings of corruption Dermot O’Leary and Tony Blackburn.

They were pre-recorded shows but encouraged people to phone in to take part in on air competitions, presumably because at the time the BBC (and other stations) tended to pretend pre-recorded shows were live and didn’t want to ruin that pretence by not requesting callers for quiz features.

OfCom said it was “very concerned by the repeated, pre-meditated and deliberate decisions to include competitions in pre-recorded programmes that were broadcast ‘as live'”, and said that doing so was “wholly unacceptable”.

The Beeb says that a policy change since these incidents means such fake phone-ins could not happen again. These, of course, are just one of many ‘phone in scandals’ that was uncovered at the BBC and other broadcasters.



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