GMTV was shocked and saddened to discover that between January 2003 and April 2007, some of our competition procedures were not carried out correctly. We found out that staff at Opera Telecom had been selecting finalists before the competition lines had closed. This meant that not everyone who entered had a fair chance of winning. (Source: GMTV press release)

I love the language in this quote. Shocked and saddened.

Shocked and saddened isn’t the kind of language you use when you find out some viewers may have been defrauded 25p in a premium rate phone-in competition. It’s the kind of language you use when a princess is killed in a Parisian underpass, an American president decides to overthrow an oil-rich dictatorship, or people in Gloucestershire get flooded out of their homes and then run out of clean drinking water.

It’s also the kind of language you use when you can’t quite believe the furore being kicked up over something so small. The kind of language you use when you realise the only reason broadcasters are committing hari kiri over the competitions scandal is that they want to appear more penitent than competing stations. The kind of language you use when you find out you’ve been found out. Oops.

Ofcom is almost certain to fine GMTV heavily, but the station is trying to minimise the fallout by not only waving off its managing director, who resigned this morning, but also running a series of draws for the unsuccessful entrants into its earlier competitions. That’s on top of a complex set of refunds, outlined in a claim form:

If you entered the main daily competition on GMTV: We will refund £1.30 for every phone entry, £1.10 for every text entry and £1 for every web entry.

If you entered the bonus competitions after playing the main competition: We will refund an additional 60 pence for every phone entry, 60 pence for every text entry and 50 pence for every web entry.

If you entered the GMTV2 competition: We will refund 25 pence for every phone entry and 35 pence for every text entry.

If that’s not complicated enough, it seems GMTV’s record-keeping is incomplete, and it’s missing details for a whole range of calls made between August 2003 and September 2004, so needs claimants to submit itemised phone bills proving their right to a refund.

The administration costs alone are going to be astronomical.

Let’s hope they don’t impact on the size of the donation it plans on making to ChildLine, which while the BBC puts at £250,000, GMTV merely calls ’substantial’.

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