Post by Teddy Bear on Oct 21, 2007 19:26:40 GMT
An article in the Telegraph comments on the recent £8m scam that came to light at ITV, and contrasts it with the far more serious £3.5BILLION scam that the BBC puts over on society on a daily basis.
TV's real crime is wasting our cash
By Jenny McCartney
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2007
As the news of ITV's enormous phone-in fraud broke last week, one can only imagine the feeling of bruised schadenfreude at the beleaguered BBC, like that of a beaten Victorian schoolboy finally witnessing a know-it-all classmate receiving a drubbing with the cane.
ITV, as it turned out, had fleeced its audience to the tune of £8 million, by rigging competitions and encouraging viewers to call premium-rate numbers long after the competition lines had closed.
The perky Geordie duo, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, were left looking unusually shamefaced, as it turned out that they were the executive producers of shows that had falsely obtained £6 million of viewers' money.
Although Ant and Dec have both strenuously denied any knowledge of the scam, their playfully bumptious personae will inevitably be dented: it's hard to poke fun quite so insouciantly at the follies of others once you yourself have had to face a sour-faced army of viewers asking for their cash back.
It is abundantly clear that ITV producers had gradually developed a reckless and contemptuous attitude to viewers and their money.
In Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, for example, producers "routinely used editorial judgement" to decide the winners of the "Jiggy Bank" competition in which viewers texted the show to compete in riding a giant mechanical pig for a prize.
The pig was dutifully ferried about to different locations every week, but producers had already made a shortlist of potential winners based on geographical proximity, and then whittled the list down further according to how enthusiastically the contestants would play up for the camera.
They were thinking primarily about an easy life, and what is rather cringeingly known as "good telly".
I have never been tempted to enter the "Jiggy Bank" pig rodeo, or any of the other money-spinners in programmes such as Soapstar Superstar, I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and The X-Factor. Yet thousands do and it is a hefty source of revenue for the channel.
It is also clear from the titles alone that the bulk of these shows are peddling amusing, instantly forgettable nonsense.
The BBC has had its own multiple crises in viewer confidence, of course, not least over the revelations that Blue Peter had falsified winners and ruthlessly altered the result of a children's online vote for a cat's name.
Its Director General, Mark Thompson, responded with a raft of disciplinary measures, including the pledge that 16,500 BBC staff would undergo an "unprecedented programme of editorial training" called Safeguarding Trust (a re-education process funded, naturally, by the licence-payers, which one might consider a perfect example of being swindled twice over).
There is evidence, however, that Mr Thompson is currently embarked upon a much more devastating and long-term fraud of viewers, although it is unlikely to land him in formal trouble with the broadcasting authorities.
It lies in his apparent determination to cut the editorial budgets of established and intelligent programmes, and reduce the output of original BBC material by 10 per cent, while pouring money into a proliferation of largely unwatched channels.
This is, I think, a much bigger scandal than the row over fake winners and fraudulent phone-ins. I never bother entering phone-in competitions, partly because I assume that I have no chance of winning.
That is not, of course, a defence of corrupt television producers who ensure that I really do have no chance of winning, but entry remains a matter of choice.
Anyone who owns a television, however, has no choice at all over the purchase of a TV licence: the alternative is to be heavily fined or to go to jail. In recent years the licence-payers have had to watch as their money is freely spent on the likes of BBC3 programmes with titles such as F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman and I'm a Boy Anorexic.
So terrified is the BBC of being accused of elitism that it's now a bit like a posh boy determinedly slumming it in an inner-city crack den, speaking a foul-mouthed patois that no one else really understands.
It has confounded making programmes for a wide cross-section of society with making programmes about them. We all know that the BBC has a broad remit, and licence-payers come in all shapes and sizes, but surely even hairy anorexics occasionally like to get their teeth into a good bit of original drama.
Few people would argue that the sprawling BBC could not do with pruning. Very few would agree, however, that the sharpest chopping should take place in current affairs and children's programming, which is where the highest proportion of redundancies are to be made.
Some television programmes are simply better than others: more informative, thought-provoking, intelligent and evocative, and viewers are quick to recognise it. That should be where the BBC is unashamedly concentrating its efforts and resources.
In years to come people will no longer be wondering how and why ITV stuffed its corporate "Jiggy Bank" with £8 million of ill-gotten viewers' cash. I have a feeling, however, that they might still be asking just where Mr Thompson and his immediate cohorts managed to stow an annual income of £3.5 billion.
TV's real crime is wasting our cash
By Jenny McCartney
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2007
As the news of ITV's enormous phone-in fraud broke last week, one can only imagine the feeling of bruised schadenfreude at the beleaguered BBC, like that of a beaten Victorian schoolboy finally witnessing a know-it-all classmate receiving a drubbing with the cane.
ITV, as it turned out, had fleeced its audience to the tune of £8 million, by rigging competitions and encouraging viewers to call premium-rate numbers long after the competition lines had closed.
The perky Geordie duo, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, were left looking unusually shamefaced, as it turned out that they were the executive producers of shows that had falsely obtained £6 million of viewers' money.
Although Ant and Dec have both strenuously denied any knowledge of the scam, their playfully bumptious personae will inevitably be dented: it's hard to poke fun quite so insouciantly at the follies of others once you yourself have had to face a sour-faced army of viewers asking for their cash back.
It is abundantly clear that ITV producers had gradually developed a reckless and contemptuous attitude to viewers and their money.
In Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, for example, producers "routinely used editorial judgement" to decide the winners of the "Jiggy Bank" competition in which viewers texted the show to compete in riding a giant mechanical pig for a prize.
The pig was dutifully ferried about to different locations every week, but producers had already made a shortlist of potential winners based on geographical proximity, and then whittled the list down further according to how enthusiastically the contestants would play up for the camera.
They were thinking primarily about an easy life, and what is rather cringeingly known as "good telly".
I have never been tempted to enter the "Jiggy Bank" pig rodeo, or any of the other money-spinners in programmes such as Soapstar Superstar, I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and The X-Factor. Yet thousands do and it is a hefty source of revenue for the channel.
It is also clear from the titles alone that the bulk of these shows are peddling amusing, instantly forgettable nonsense.
The BBC has had its own multiple crises in viewer confidence, of course, not least over the revelations that Blue Peter had falsified winners and ruthlessly altered the result of a children's online vote for a cat's name.
Its Director General, Mark Thompson, responded with a raft of disciplinary measures, including the pledge that 16,500 BBC staff would undergo an "unprecedented programme of editorial training" called Safeguarding Trust (a re-education process funded, naturally, by the licence-payers, which one might consider a perfect example of being swindled twice over).
There is evidence, however, that Mr Thompson is currently embarked upon a much more devastating and long-term fraud of viewers, although it is unlikely to land him in formal trouble with the broadcasting authorities.
It lies in his apparent determination to cut the editorial budgets of established and intelligent programmes, and reduce the output of original BBC material by 10 per cent, while pouring money into a proliferation of largely unwatched channels.
This is, I think, a much bigger scandal than the row over fake winners and fraudulent phone-ins. I never bother entering phone-in competitions, partly because I assume that I have no chance of winning.
That is not, of course, a defence of corrupt television producers who ensure that I really do have no chance of winning, but entry remains a matter of choice.
Anyone who owns a television, however, has no choice at all over the purchase of a TV licence: the alternative is to be heavily fined or to go to jail. In recent years the licence-payers have had to watch as their money is freely spent on the likes of BBC3 programmes with titles such as F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman and I'm a Boy Anorexic.
So terrified is the BBC of being accused of elitism that it's now a bit like a posh boy determinedly slumming it in an inner-city crack den, speaking a foul-mouthed patois that no one else really understands.
It has confounded making programmes for a wide cross-section of society with making programmes about them. We all know that the BBC has a broad remit, and licence-payers come in all shapes and sizes, but surely even hairy anorexics occasionally like to get their teeth into a good bit of original drama.
Few people would argue that the sprawling BBC could not do with pruning. Very few would agree, however, that the sharpest chopping should take place in current affairs and children's programming, which is where the highest proportion of redundancies are to be made.
Some television programmes are simply better than others: more informative, thought-provoking, intelligent and evocative, and viewers are quick to recognise it. That should be where the BBC is unashamedly concentrating its efforts and resources.
In years to come people will no longer be wondering how and why ITV stuffed its corporate "Jiggy Bank" with £8 million of ill-gotten viewers' cash. I have a feeling, however, that they might still be asking just where Mr Thompson and his immediate cohorts managed to stow an annual income of £3.5 billion.