GCap fined £1.11m over unfair competition
Thursday, June 26 2008, 11:23 BST By James Welsh, International Editor
International editor ffs? how pretentious. and if he is that, why is he reporting on a domestic story?
30 stations owned by GCap Media have been fined a record total of £1.11m for "unfair conduct in a listener competition".
Ofcom said that a series of "extremely serious" breaches of two rules in the Broadcasting Code - one pertaining to the fair conduct of competitions and the other regarding the use of premium rate services - during the Secret Sound competition that ran across GCap's One Network of local FM stations warranted the fine.
The competition ran from 9am to 3pm each day between January 15 and February 8 2007, with one round per hour. Listeners were invited to guess a mystery sound by calling in or sending a text. The competition's terms and conditions said that at the end of each round, an entrant would be randomly selected to go on air with their answer; if it was correct, they would win a cash prize but if it was wrong, all other entries from the round would be discarded and the prize fund increased by £100. Over the course of the competition, 133 rounds were played.
A whistleblower alleged that GCap had deliberately selected entrants with incorrect answers to participate on the air in a move found by Ofcom to be "a deliberate and pre-meditated means of preventing the prize from being won in that round", thus increasing the prize fund and "increasing the competition's 'entertainment value'" - a practice that "resulted in those listeners who paid to enter the affected rounds having no chance of winning".
GCap had already been fined £17,500 for the incident in July 2007 by premium rate regulator PhonepayPlus, which then referred the case to Ofcom. The broadcasting regulator found that the practice of deliberately selecting a participant with an incorrect answer had been sanctioned by a mid-ranking employee "who had operational responsibility for the content and production of network syndicated programmes", and added that although no members of GCap's senior management had been aware of the problems at the time, "this in itself indicated the absence of any sufficient or effective oversight".
Ofcom further criticised GCap for issuing a press release in August about the compliance failure that described it as "an isolated incident" and a "system error", terms that the regulator considered to be "fundamentally misleading and inaccurate" and "an inept attempt at 'news management' on GCap's part". It added that GCap was uncooperative in its submissions to the investigation, "the first case of its kind in which the behaviour of the licensee... had effectively hindered Ofcom's investigation".
"In summary", Ofcom concluded, "for GCap employees responsible for the conduct of networked competitions to have deliberately and repeatedly prevented the prize from being won, disenfranchising all those listeners who paid to enter in the affected rounds, and deceiving 30 local radio audiences as to the fair conduct of the competition, was inexcusable."
Apparently this was top story on Exeter FM news on Saturday while GCap owned Gemini FM, where strangely avoiding the story.
Tomorrow Gcap/Global are introducing a day time networked show for the first time, and the creation of two networks in the One Network, some are speculating many local FM stations may become Heart.
