"Systemic failure" in premium rate TV phone-ins

An Ofcom-commissioned report penned by the former deputy chief executive of BBC News Richard Ayre has found evidence of a "systemic failure" in the way British broadcasters operate premium rate television phone-ins.

Ofcom opened an inquiry into the use of premium rate services on British television on March 22 after a spate of high-profile compliance failures. Today, Ayre said that while he did not examine "in detail" any specific cases due to ongoing formal investigations, he discussed the operation of premium rate services with senior executives at broadcasters, production companies and service providers and took contextual compliance failures into account when drawing conclusions.

Ayre said that premium rate services are seen by programme makers "as a way of increasing audience participation and loyalty," and that commercial broadcasters see them as "an increasing, and increasingly important, source of additional revenue." In a damning indictment of the way the services have been operated, he said:

"Given the scale of audience participation across such a broad range of channels, programmes and transactional opportunities, and sometimes over lengthy periods, the number of would-be participants who may have been ignored, misled or unfairly charged cannot be guessed at, and nor can the costs they have incurred. The figures may run into millions.

"If we include those viewers who, though they did not themselves take part in a PRS transaction, observed the progress of a vote or a competition where the outcome was affected, distorted, or simply made up, the numbers poorly served by the programmes concerned is considerably higher."

Later in the report, he said that there was a "systemic" theme to the compliance failures. "The range of problems was diverse," Ayre said, "but the underlying theme is a systemic one – or rather, the absence of systems designed to require, ensure and audit compliance. In the absence of such systems individual mistakes, whether the result of technical failure, misjudgement, negligence or deliberate deceit, too often went unnoticed or unreported and sometimes ignored."

As for the apportioning of blame, Ayre said:

"Though blame for what went wrong from time to time can be traced variously to different points in the production chain, it would not be fair to say that culpability for PRS failures is equally shared. The telecoms operators, for example, may have been unable or unwilling in some instances to provide sufficiently robust technical systems to ensure that no calls were ever lost or that no caller was charged after the lines should have closed, but the service providers, producers and broadcasters were, or should have been, aware of these limitations and they went ahead despite the risks."

Ayre's report will now be considered by the Ofcom board.