Ofcom fines GCap record £1.1m
Thursday, 26 Jun 2008 15:14
GCap radio group fined for competition
Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has fined commercial radio group GCap a record £1.1 million after allegations of competition fixing.
Ofcom fined 30 local radio stations across GCap's network for allegedly selecting wrong entrants to a 'Secret Sound' competition so the prize would not be won too quickly.
The radio stations invited listeners to identify a sound played on air, then text in their answers. Every hour, the station selected a text at random. If the contestant was incorrect, all other texts from the 'round' would be discarded and the sound played again, until a winning text was chosen.
But a whistleblower tipped off the regulator that GCap had deliberately selected entrants with wrong answers to participate in the Secret Sound competition on air.
"This practice resulted in those listeners who paid to enter the affected rounds having no chance of winning," the regulator said in a statement.
In addition, more listeners were encouraged to pay to enter in the extra rounds before each prize was awarded, Ofcom found.
Ofcom said it considered the breaches to be "serious, repeated and deliberate".
In addition, GCap aggravated the situation by being neither as full nor as frank as it should have been either with Ofcom or its listeners, Ofcom added.
In a statement, GCap said: "The competition ran over 16 months ago. Since then, GCap has undergone two senior management changes and a change of ownership, now being wholly owned by Global Radio.
"Today's ruling is taken extremely seriously by GCap. The new management and owners look forward to building a strong future for the commercial radio industry where the trust of its listeners and of its regulator is of the highest importance.
"To that end the new management are already putting in place new measures to build on the already improved controls implemented at GCap and the company has not run premium rate competitions of this kind for the last 12 months."
The penalty follows Ofcom's recent record £5.675 million television fine to ITV for breaking rules on premium rate phone services in viewer competitions.
The BBC, Channel 4 and Five have also been in trouble with the regulator over competitions over the last year.