British TV company fined £2m for phone-in scandal

British media regulator Ofcom has fined morning TV programme contractor GMTV £2 million ($4.03 million) for letting viewers enter competitions they had no chance of winning, the regulator said today.

Ofcom said GMTV had breached rules relating to fair conduct and its responsibility to control service arrangements. It said GMTV had picked competition finalists before phone lines closed and selected some finalists only between certain times.

On Monday, Opera Telecom, the company that ran competitions for GMTV, was fined £250,000 by regulator Icstis after viewers lost an estimated £20 million in the phone-in scandal over almost four years. GMTV said in July its managing director would stand down over the problem. Opera Telecom has already been sacked by GMTV.

A row over the deliberate deception of viewers has engulfed all major UK broadcasters this year but Icstis described the GMTV case as the worst it had seen in terms of the number of consumers affected and the amount of money at stake. GMTV is 75 percent owned by commercial broadcaster ITV and 25 percent by Walt Disney Co.

Source: Media Network, Reuters