{"id":1595,"date":"2006-08-08T18:19:20","date_gmt":"2006-08-08T18:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2006\/08\/itv_turns_to_ph\/"},"modified":"2006-08-08T18:19:20","modified_gmt":"2006-08-08T18:19:20","slug":"itv_turns_to_ph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/itv_turns_to_ph\/","title":{"rendered":"ITV Turns To Phone-in Competitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t you absolutely despair of our major commercial television broadcaster when you read a headline like this:
\nITV turns to phone-in competitions to beat ad slup<\/a>
\nIt turns out that those trivially easy competitions on This Morning earn £9m a year, while ITV Play is expected to bring in £20m this year.
\nThis is all cash that the viewer is paying directly to the broadcaster – except that the viewer pays even more since that the viewer’s telecoms supplier and the TV company’s telecoms operator each take hefty chunks too.
\nAnd in case you hadn’t noticed, your local ITV “news” programme is also running plenty of competitions. This week London Tonight is offering tickets to the Rolling Stones each evening:
\nOne source said each ITV1 regional bulletin was being encouraged to have one competition a day, news events permitting, although the spokeswoman denied there was any edict to this effect.<\/em>
\nWell it’s nice to know that if there’s a major story in London, the competition might be dropped.
\nThe most interesting bit of the report comes at the end:
\nHowever, the growing revenues from premium-rate phone-in competitions could face a threat from a Gambling Commission public consultation.
\nThe consultation will question the legality of many prize draws and competitions, a process that could threaten the business models of “participation TV” operations such as ITV Play.
\nIt has been prompted by changes in UK gambling industry laws that will come into force late next year.
\nThe consultation will consider whether the simple questions used in various televised quizzes – that generate money from consumers calling premium-rate phone lines – are a form of gambling.
\nIt will also look at whether the question formats used by Channel 4’s Quiz Call, ITV Play and quizzes on shows such as This Morning and Richard and Judy require any skill or if, like a lottery, they are a game of chance.
\nIf such games are classed as lotteries, they will have to be regulated and 20% of revenue must go to charitable causes.<\/em>
\nLet’s face it, these are lotteries rather than games of skill. In which case, I believe that the viewer ought to know what the odds of him or her winning are. If I do buy a Lotto ticket for the main draw, I know that it’s roughly 14m:1 that I’ll win the jackpot. But if I’m foolish enough to phone into one of ITV Play’s games, I don’t even know the odds that I get through to them.
\nIf we’re happy letting gambling go by happily on national television on every show, then fine, but let’s call a spade a spade and face the fact that this is more gambling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t you absolutely despair of our major commercial television broadcaster when you read a headline like this: ITV turns to phone-in competitions to beat ad slup It turns out that those trivially easy competitions on This Morning earn £9m a year, while ITV Play is expected to bring in £20m this year. This is all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}