The long-awaited fine of£5,675,000, is higher than the£4m that the regulation had been expected to impose and is almost three times its previous highest fine of£2m, imposed on GMTV last September.
The fine breaks down as follows:£3m to LWT for Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and£1.2m for Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon;£1.2m to LWT for Soapstar Superstar; and£1.75m to ITV2.
Ofcom ITV was guilty of “some of the most serious breaches” of its Broadcasting Code concerning the abuse of premium rate services (PRS) in its programming.
ITV has pledged an additional£7.8 million for viewer compensation and to charity, which Ofcom said it took into account in reaching its decision.
Philip Graf, the chairman of Ofcom's content sanctions committee, said: “ITV programme makers totally disregarded their own published terms and conditions and Ofcom Codes. Further there was a completely inadequate compliance system in place. The result was that millions of paying entrants were misled into believing they could fairly interact with some of ITV's most popular programmes.”
Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards added: “This was a thorough set of investigations which uncovered institutionalised failure within ITV that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct on mass audience programmes.
“The industry can be in no doubt how seriously Ofcom takes the issue of audience trust. Our new licence conditions requiring broadcasters, who operate in this area, to conduct third party audits will ensure that consumers are protected”.
ITV must now broadcast each of Ofcom's judgements on two separate occasions.
Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway
The fine against Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway covers the period from 14 January 2003 to 21 October 2006.
It includes penalties relating to the game Grab The Ads, for selecting competition finalists before the telephone lines were announced as closed, staggering the choice of finalists so that entrants did not have a fair and equal chance of winning, and selecting people on the basis of their suitability to be on television and where they lived.
The latter is contrary to the broadcaster's own terms and conditions, which explicitly stated that entrants would be chosen randomly.
The Jiggy Bank game was also guilty of local selection and for choosing winners on the basis of their suitability to be on screen. On top of this, individual already known to the production team was placed on the shortlist of potential winners and went on to “win” the competition.
A third game, Win The Ads, was also penalised for choosing contestants on the basis of their suitability to be on screen.
Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon
On six occasions on Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon between 17 September and 29 October 2005, winners in the Prize Mountain competition were selected based on their suitability to be on screen and the licensee was unable to account for almost half of the competition entries.
Soapstar Superstar
In one edition of Soapstar Superstar in January 2007, the programme makers ignored the viewers' vote and finalised results before the lines had actually closed, which resulted in the wrong participants being put forward for eviction.
On several occasions between 5 and 13 January 2007, the production team also overrode the song choices voted for by viewers. On these occasions a proportion of viewers who voted had not got what they had paid for.
ITV2
Ofcom's financial penalty on ITV2 relates to conduct between 12 December 2006 and 24 October 2007.
On 28 separate occasions, when repeating programmes, the broadcaster failed to inform viewers that interactive competitions had concluded. This meant that all PRS entries in these competitions had no chance of winning but were still charged.
On three separate occasions, when repeating interactive dating programme Playdate, the broadcaster failed to inform viewers that the broadcasts were not live and interactivity was no longer available. This meant that the PRS entry routes to participate in the programmes remained open and anyone who called was still charged.
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