Record fine over radio contests

The competition ran for four weeks from January 2007

Ofcom has imposed the biggest ever fine - �1.1m - on a UK radio group, after it found listeners who paid to enter competitions had no chance of winning.

Thirty GCap Media stations were fined for unfair conduct in contests where listeners were asked to guess a mystery sound by calling or texting in answers.

Ofcom found that, instead of selecting listeners at random, those with wrong answers were deliberately put on air.

GCap said new measures were being introduced to "improve controls".

Entries discarded

The Secret Sound competition ran for four weeks on 30 stations in GCap's 42-station One Network in January and February of last year.

It ran from 0900 to 1500 each week day. At the end of each hourly round, an entrant was selected, supposedly at random, to give their answer.

When incorrect answers were given, all other entries from that round were discarded and listeners were invited to enter the next hourly round with prize money increasing by �100.

Ofcom took the view that the production team's actions were calculated and deliberate, and evidenced a complete disregard for those listeners who paid to enter Ofcom

Ofcom said the problem came to light when a complaint was made by a whistleblower.

It found that choosing to put incorrect answers to air was "a deliberate and pre-meditated means of preventing the prize from being won in that round".

"Ofcom took the view that the production team's actions were calculated and deliberate and evidenced a complete disregard for those listeners who paid to enter, as well as the audiences overall," it said.

This was "inexcusable", the report added.

GCap had already been fined �17,500 by premium rate watchdog PhonepayPlus over the same issue.

GCap, which was taken over by the Global Radio Group earlier this month, said in a statement that it took the ruling "extremely seriously".

It added: "The new management are already putting in place new measures to build on the already-improved controls implemented at GCap.

"The company has not run premium-rate competitions of this kind for the last 12 months."

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