TV competitions....latest fiddle....

[Loosehead]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91248-1 302307,00.html
why is is so difficult for the TV mob to run a straight competition? I mean it ain't rocket science is it? Are they just so pathalogically bent they can't help it?

[kwicky]

Where moneys involved there is always corruption. Take Maggie Thatcher's son Mark who got involved in some plot. Now he is forbidden to visit his own children in the States.

[sir.prize]

And Maggie's husband Dennis used 10 Downing St notepaper for his own private business.

[Loosehead]

so it's MrsT's fault then, you guys are on the ball!

[jno]

if you're actually asking why, rather than just ranting about the media...

I think the answer is that their prime interest is in putting a show on. This means everything goes according to schedule, votes are taken, the polls close, the winner is announced. What's happened in some cases (I don't know about the Brand ones) is that something has gone wrong. The phones don't work, the vote counter breaks down; but to stop the show in midstream would kill the momentum. So they improvise, inventing a winner by getting one of their colleagues to pretend they're a stranger or whatever.

In the well known case of the Blue Peter cat it was because they thought (rightly or wrongly) that the chosen name was improper so they chose one they thought was acceptable.

None of this is being pathologically bent. It's just trying to keep the viewing public happy. But it means overriding the rights of the voting public, and I think they overlooked this. That's wrong, in my opinion, but it doesn't mean they're all crooks.

[jno]

... should have added: at least some of this comes about when shows like Richard & Judy outsource these competitions to companies that are in it for the money - mostly the income from premium phone lines. This should be very closely monitored, and too often hasn't been. But it didn't bring any profit to R&J themselves and they seemed mortally embarrassed by the whole thing (and rightly so). On the part of the channels, I think it's laziness or incompetence in not setting up proper monitoring structures that's to blame, not bentness.

[Loosehead]

I think the Q is clear, it just seems that the idea of not fixing these competition is some how not considered and option.

[jno]

Not so - most competitions remain firmly unfixed. It's mostly (at least on the BBC) when things go wrong and they try to sort it out at short notice that they've forgotten their responsibility to the people who've been taking part. The ones like R&J do seem to have been fixed, but by outside contractors rather than by the broadcasters themselves. I'm not saying broadcasters are never at fault - I haven't followed all these cases in great detail - but mostly it seems 'the TV mob' haven't done anything very wicked, just careless. The public seems to love 'interactivity' - voting on Big Brother for instance - but the infrastructure for offering it hasn't always been thought through.

[Supernick]

I happened to have extremely close links with the R&J show 3-4 years ago on the premium line side of things. No-one was innocent in it, but the worst were the production company behind the show.
Basically, you have lines opening and closing at certain times. They open a few minutes before the question is read out, and remained open until after the show. As soon as the question was read out, winners would be selected and sent to the production company, not just one but 20-30 over the course of 40 mins. This is necessary so that the production company can vet the caller to make sure that they're not deranged. However they had a tendency to select one of the first callers, so when R&J asked people to keep phoning in, chances are the production company already had in mind who they were calling back.
So R&J then announce that the lines are closed and say, 'Lets see who we have on the line", IMMEDIATELY. There is no way anyone calling a few minutes earlier could have got on because there was no chance to even see if they had the question correct, let alone forward them to the production company and vet them for suitability. This would need at least 5 minutes, and people knew that. Heck, even the public should have been able to work that one out.

[Loosehead]

Thanks nick. Why is it necessary to "vet" the winners? I realise this is probably a radical suggestion but why don't they just select the winner by the announced means and then that's the winner, end of! Who cares if they are not considered "suitable" whatever that means, they won under the rules.

[Supernick]

cont.

Then there is the question of the lines remaining open. As a company what do you do?
1. Close the lines right on cue, so that you get a dead tone if you call later? Morally this is the best option. However, you'll be flooded with complaints from moron viewers asking why the phone lines aren't working. This will clog up Channel 4's phonelines no end, and they don't want hundreds of people calling with the same stupid question
2. Place a close message on the line informing the customer that the competition is closed? You could do this, but the customer will be charged for earing the message. This has nothing to do with the outsourced company or R&J or whoever, it is a set charge for calling a certain phoneline that is set by the operator. Again, you are going to get a lot of complaints when te viewers get their bill.
3. Just keep the lines open? This gives the least complaints as the idiots who call after a competition has closed think they have entered and don't complain. Obviously this is the most dubious morally

[Supernick]

Loosehead - In terms of the R&J show, the competition winner goes live on air. They have to make sure that the person is over 18, isn't the type who is going to yell swearwords in the air, or who couldn't be understood. In other comps this won't be the case of course, and there wouldn't be a vetting process

[fletcher.5]

Kwicky yes, but you are forgetting, mummy`s little soldier was bailed out by mumsy after he squeeled on his mates.
jno the real con about Blue Peter was, the cat won it.
As for Pinch & Judy well every little helps