This Morning rapped over Amanda Holden promotion

In Ofcom’s latest broadcast bulletin, the media regulator found ITV1’s flagship morning show in breach of rules on giving “undue prominence to services” by allowing Holden to promote WH Smith’s QualitySolicitors scheme.

The Britain’s Got Talent openly encouraged This Morning viewers to take advantage of the initiative, which has placed an approved QualitySolicitors lawyer in hundreds of the retailer’s stores so that customers can access free legal advice.

Holden spoke about the campaign in positive terms and said: “I’m launching that today and from Monday if you go onto the QualitySolicitors’ website … you will get the list of the hundred WH Smiths near you.”

Ofcom said: “Where a guest has some form of involvement or arrangement with a commercial product or service, particularly where there appears to be no particular link to their profession or experience, there may be less editorial justification for interviews to feature these topics in detail.”

It added: “In this case, no explanation was offered as to why Holden was working with QualitySolicitors and, as its area of business had no obvious link to her entertainment career, there appeared to be insufficient editorial justification for the extent of the discussion of it in the interview.”

Furthermore, Ofcom judged that one of the This Morning presenters “appeared to endorse” the scheme in response to Holden’s plug.

ITV defended the remarks, arguing they were “editorially justified” as it was of interest to viewers and the This Morning presenters had not endorsed the scheme, but were clarifying Holden’s comments.

“Given the relative shortness of the discussion [in this instance], as opposed to the longer discussion of the television and stage projects, [it did] not feel that the interview gave undue prominence to QualitySolicitors,” it told Ofcom.

ITV has pledged to provide compliance training refreshers for live programming production teams across ITV Studios.