Deloitte ITV Review Highlights Serious Editorial Issues
The Deloitte review into ITV’s premium rate services (PRS) has found serious editorial issues in three ITV programmes: Soapstar Superstar; Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway; and Ant and Dec’s Gameshow Marathon 2005.
The Deloitte review also highlighted serious technical issues around the use of red button for voting and the late arrival of SMS text votes on five occasions affecting two ITV shows, including The X Factor final 2005. However, it added that “on none of these occasions did the problems alter the actual outcome of those votes”.
The review identified key areas of failure in the way in which ITV integrated PRS into its programming:
* Programme producers, staff and supporting companies did not always recognise or respect the impact of editorial actions on the integrity of interactive elements
* Lack of agreed and consistently applied procedures, controls and ways of working between the many parties involved in the process
* Supporting technology, in the most part supplied by third party suppliers, lacking the reliability and resilience consistently to deliver the required level of service
In response to the review, ITV has said that it will offer affected consumers reimbursement, with the right to claim at any time before 29 February 2008 by contacting ITV on Freephone number 0800 028 0180 or via www.ITV.com/competitions.
As it may not be possible to reimburse everyone affected the broadcaster said “the difference between the total potential reimbursement and the actual amount claimed by consumers will be donated to charity.
“The total potential reimbursement is around £7.8 million, which represents the amount spent by affected consumers and is almost double the amount ITV actually received from these calls.”
ITV said that it could cost £18 million – including the £7.8 million reimbursment costs – to clean up the mess made by its PRS mistakes.
In addition to reimbursements, ITV also announced a number of significant changes to the operation of PRS within its programming and training processes.
* The immediate suspension of all SMS and red button voting in live programmes. Only when the network and platform operators can reassure ITV that appropriate systems are in place to ensure delivery of votes in a timely fashion, will ITV reconsider this position. In the meantime, ITV will continue to offer SMS and red button for non-time critical competitions and other interactivity.
* Bringing telephony service provision in-house on programmes made by ITV Productions, with an intention to extend that across all programmes broadcast on ITV. ITV is working with BT to develop a solution to manage interactive service provision in house. ITV’s dependency on third party providers will be reduced and the level of control that ITV can exercise over services will significantly increase.
* Introduction of relevant and targeted training across the company ensuring that employees are aware of their responsibilities in respect of the operation of interactive services and its integration into programme making. In addition all productions employees will receive broad compliance training on joining the company and will be required to attend refresher training on a regular basis.
* ITV’s compliance resources are being strengthened with the addition of a dedicated Interactive Governance team to ensure maintenance of industry leading standards and the probity of all interactive services across ITV.
Michael Grade, ITV executive chairman, said: “Today marks a major milestone in our efforts to restore public trust and put our house in order after a series of events that have affected not just us, but the entire broadcasting industry.
“When allegations around premium rate services in ITV programmes first emerged in March, we took immediate action. We suspended all premium rate services and appointed Deloitte to come in and review our procedures and then to undertake a thorough review of the previous two years’ activity in this area. Since March any programme that uses PRS has had to implement and adhere to the new procedures put in place as a result. This is working very well.
“We have today announced a comprehensive scheme to reimburse affected consumers. Any unclaimed amounts will be donated to charity. My overall conclusion from the review is that there was a serious cultural failure within ITV. The fundamental failure was in not recognising the impact of PRS on existing editorial processes. The Ayre report on PRS put this very succinctly, and I quote: ‘broadcasters often ignored the fact that viewers had entered in to an additional transaction entitling them to an extra service they paid extra for’.”
Towards the end of September, Ofcom fined GMTV – 75% of which is owned by ITV – £2 million for misleading viewers over a phone-in competition (see GMTV Given £2 Million Fine).
ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com