More competition-related naughtiness from the BBC has been revealed with the announcement that broadcasting watchdog OfCom has rapped the broadcaster over a competition involving CMU favourites Mcfly.
Regional news show 'North West Tonight' announced the prize of the pop band performing at a school anywhere in the North West as part of a Comic Relief contest last February, only to find out at a later date that the band were only able to visit a school in the Greater Manchester area as a result of a packed schedule. Unfortunately having realised the misunderstanding, BBC staff decided that instead of coming clean about the issue they would instead secretly prevent any school from the other areas winning the prize, removing all such votes from the running.
Called into to investigate the competition, those Ofcom types commented that the BBC "was unfair to those viewers who entered [from outside Greater Manchester]... on the basis that they had a fair and equal chance of winning it when, in fact, due to the location of their school, they had no chance of winning". The industry body continued: "Ofcom considers that the BBC should have made it clear to its viewers before the competition was closed that it was not going to be possible to honour the original terms and conditions of the competition".
On the plus side for the BBC, Ofcom did note that given the free nature of the competition only "limited harm" was done to viewers, presumably meaning it didn't leave them out of pocket like many of the other dodgy phone ins of recent times.
All the same, the BBC had this to say about the whole debacle: "'North West Tonight' launched this competition in good faith for all its viewers. We later discovered that McFly's schedule meant they could only visit a school within the Greater Manchester area. We should have told viewers that we had changed the rules, but we didn't. We would like to apologise to all our viewers for this error".