GMTV MD To Leave Following Phone-In Scandal
Paul Corley, the managing director of GMTV, is to stand down from the breakfast broadcaster following the company’s recent phone-in quiz scandal.
In April, Corley appeared on the GMTV sofa to apologise to viewers over failures in its premium-rate phone quiz, and will now step down in September.
The GMTV call-TV scandal erupted following a Panorama investigation alleging that the broadcaster’s phone quiz service supplier, Opera Interactive Technology, had failed to deliver fair competitions that had effectively cost participants more than £40 million over a four-year period.
At the time, GMTV insisted it knew nothing of the alleged irregularities in its quizzes. It terminated its contract with Opera and moved to reassure viewers its phone competition would be run fairly (see GMTV Claims It Had No Idea Of Apparent Phone-In Problems).
A recent study showed that the reputations of commercial broadcasters have been severely damaged by the recent scandals, with GMTV the hardest hit.
75% of respondents to a poll said they trust it less since it became embroiled in irregularities over its phone-in competitions. The survey of a 1,000 people was commissioned by marketing website Utalkmarketing.com and carried out by OMD Snapshots (see Hanging On The Telephone).
GMTV has today also unveiled plans to introduce a raft of new measures and checks to ensure there are no such failures in its call-TV services in the future.
The broadcaster is setting aside at least £2.75 million to compensate viewers who lost out calling its phone quiz.
Yesterday, Ofcom announced it would take on board recommendations made by Richard Ayre, who found “systemic failures” in PRS services (see Ofcom Finds ‘Systemic Failures’ In Premium Rate Phone-In Services), amending broadcasters’ licences to make them directly responsible for failures in participation services on TV and radio (see Ofcom To Make Broadcasters Responsible For PRS Failures).
Five, Channel 4 and the BBC have all announced measures to review procedures for such services, in a move aimed at trying to restore viewer trust (see Broadcasters Look To Improve Viewer Trust).
GMTV: www.gm.tv