Dial-in contest row puts spotlight on Channel 4 again

Dial-in contest row puts spotlight on Channel 4 again
After inviting criticism for the racism row on Celebrity Big Brother, UK TV network Channel 4 has once again come under fire after rumors that fans dialing in to participate in the on-air competition You Say, We Pay on The Richard & Judy Show are being persuaded to make calls to a premium rate number even after the winners are selected. Viewers have to pay £1 to participate in the contest.

The program, hosted by husband-wife duo Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, invited over 32,000 calls February 5 onwards even when the likelihood of the callers being included in the likely winners' list was zero. In the daily contest, viewers watching the show on television dial in and describe the images they see on the TV screen to Finnigan and Madeley, so they can identify the celebrity or item in the image. If the host identifies the screen image correctly, the viewer who described the image stands to win £1,000. According to media reports, in the week beginning February 5, the show's service provider Eckoh sent a list of 24 candidates for the prize to the show's producer Cactus TV. The candidates were selected within the first seven minutes after the show began. However, in spite of the list already being sent, viewers of the program were encouraged to dial in even though their entries would not be taken for the nominees' list. Each day as many as 15,000 people participate in the contest.

While it is not clear if the hosts were aware of the anomaly, Channel 4 said the misstep was not an intentional but a technical glitch. “We take these claims seriously and will be investigating them fully. Channel 4 is committed to ensuring all our on-air competitions are conducted fairly and transparently and we reject any suggestion that we would knowingly mislead viewers in any way,” the network said in a statement. The statement added that the channel used the services of another company to 'operate the phone lines, administer the competition and put forward the names of potential winners'. Cactus took the contest off air on Friday and it is not clear when You Say, We Pay would be back on the show. The channel may have made as much as £1 million extra if the rumors have substance. But Channel 4 denied this. “It makes no material difference to the channel whether the eventual winner is selected the moment the phone lines open or just before they close,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, the episode will be probed by the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS), a premium telephone rate watchdog. In addition, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee member and Labour MP Rosemary McKenna said her committee will closely scrutinize the episode to see if the channel has been misleading its viewers. Earlier, the panel had strongly urged channels that air contests to clearly communicate the rules and amounts involved in participation for such competitions. According to McKenna, if Channel 4 deliberately led its viewers to believe they had a chance of winning, the network was guilty of 'fraud'. “That…is extremely concerning. That could be considered fraud. I was shocked that Channel 4 could be potentially involved in this,” she was quoted as saying.

This is not the first time the channel has invited flak for its voting system and contest rules. Earlier in 2005, Channel 4 came under attack when it asked viewers to vote contestants back into Big Brother after they were evicted. Viewers who had paid to vote the contestants out protested that their money had been wasted since the contestants were being allowed back in. Recently, the celebrity version of the same show made headlines when Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was subjected to alleged racial abuse at the hands of another contestant Jade Goody.