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Phone-in competitions

The BBC has launched a new department to oversee all of its interactive services, including phone-in competitions.

It says the move is part of a comprehensive plan to tackle problems that arose last year involving interactive votes, competitions and the use of premium rate phone numbers.

In July Ofcom issued the BBC with a record £400,000 fine for deceiving its audience by faking winners on eight television and radio competitions.

Competitions

That investigation found that in some cases the production team had decided to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning.

In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems made up the names of winners.

The BBC says the new department will work with production teams on all programmes that use telephone competitions, votes, awards and donations. It will also deal with contestant application lines.

Strictly Come Dancing

The new unit has already been helping programme teams on shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, Eurovision, Last Choir Standing, Maestro and Children In Need.

In November last year Ofcom brought the broadcasting industry together to try and rebuild public confidence following the competition and voting problems.

We encouraged them to take the initiative to regain the trust of their audiences and view this new BBC department as another example of broadcasters taking their responsibilities to viewers seriously.

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