GMTV To Reintroduce Competitions By Summer
GMTV will reintroduce competitions before the summer, following on from the phone-in scandals that led to fines and resignations for the broadcaster.
The broadcaster is pledging that competitions will only return once it is convinced that safeguards to ensure fair play are in place.
In a statement of programme policy for 2008, GMTV outlined an overhaul of its Monday-Friday schedule, saying it intended to “strengthen its output of national and international news, and extend commitment to current affairs.”
It added: “Housewives with children remain our key weekday commercial audience and although we intend to extent our coverage of news, we will continue to provide those elements of programming, including lifestyle and entertainment, which we believe are relevant to our audience particularly post 8am.”
GMTV will continue to maintain its children’s programming at weekends and said it had discussed expanding broadcast of home grown kids’ programming but warned that the crackdown on food and drink advertising could affect the situation going forward.
While the Sunday Programme has be re-commissioned for a further 12 months, the long-term future of the strand is in doubt.
The broadcaster said the time had come to discuss the value of the show to both GMTV and viewers. It said: “It is broadcast at a time when the audience available to view is clearly mostly made up of pre school children and their parents.
“We believe committing our airtime on Sunday to this segment of the market place with a commitment to develop UK produced children’s programming would be a much better use of our airtime.”
The impact of last year’s scandals, where viewers were swindled out of millions of pounds by taking part in competitions they stood no chance of winning, has been serious on GMTV’s revenues.
Ofcom found the broadcaster guilty of gross negligence revealing that it estimated as many as 25 million callers were affected by the irregularities in the competitions and that revenue generated by callers who could not have won was more than £20 million.
GMTV was fined £2 million by the regulator and also offered refunds to all callers affected, and held 250 new draws with a £10,000 prize. The company also made a £250,000 donation to Childline and suspended all phone-in competitions (see GMTV Given £2 Million Fine).
Both GMTV managing director Paul Corley and head of competitions Kate Fleming resigned (see GMTV MD To Leave Following Phone-In Scandal).
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