GCap: No more profits from premium rate phone-ins

GCap Media has announced it will no longer run profit-making premium rate phone-in competitions after receiving a £17,500 fine from regulator Icstis.

The fine relates to a competition on the company's One Network of 31 stations in January where listeners were asked to call or text to enter, with some mistakenly providing an answer. The callers that provided wrong answers were deliberately selected to appear on air to give their incorrect reponses. In doing so, the competition broke the Icstis code.

As a result GCap has reviewed its premium rate services and said that it would "ensure that any charges are commensurate with the cost to the business," and as such it would only use such services where it could cover the costs of running them.

GCap has called the matter an "isolated incident" and has decided to offer a full refund to anyone who took part in the Secret Sounds competition between January 15 and February 9 2007. Listeners can write with a copy of their phone bill to a Freepost address, which will be made available in the next two weeks on the GCap website.

It said in a statement: "GCap Media has always made every effort to ensure that our competitions comply with all relevant legislation and regulation and that above all, they are fair. As the system error was discovered, we took swift and decisive action to tighten up our procedures to prevent any similar breaches occurring in the future."