After months of the BBC’s minor misdemeanours being plastered all over the papers, they have been put into sharp relief by lurid stories of far more serious goings-on at ITV.

The independent broadcaster, it seems, made £7.8 million from over 8 million viewers by claiming to have entered them into premium-rate competitions they had no chance of winning.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, ITV chief Michael Grade described the findings, contained in an independent, commissioned report, as a ’serious cultural failure’. He’s right, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Heads rolled at the BBC for no more serious a crime than having viewers believe it was a caller, and not a handy passing child that won the competition to name the new Blue Peter cat. All competitions on all BBC services were scrapped the moment the story broke, and the Corporation went through a very public airing of its dirty washing as it investigated the facts and fired programme makers for the most minor indiscretions.

How different is the story from ITV. Grade who, let us not forget, used to run the BBC, wouldn’t commit to any dismissals and said only that if he’d been in charge at the time he himself would be resigning right now. He claimed that in cheating the viewers this way the channels had not been out to make more money, but to cut corners in providing better programmes, conveniently forgetting that better programmes mean more viewers, and more viewers mean more money.

But at the end of the day these competitions are about making money, whether on the BBC, ITV, or one of the myriad satellite channels. If they weren’t, they’d be run on a freefone basis, or at least charged at local rate.

ITV will now be refunding those cheated callers, much like GMTV before it, but there’s no word on whether it will follow the BBC’s lead and suspend phone-based competitions for the foreseeable future.

That, sadly, shows the difference between our two leading national broadcasters, and illustrates once again why the BBC is the rightful recipient of the national TV tax, the license fee. Let’s remember this next time it’s due for review, and the independent channels start once again to call for a share of that revenue.

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