UK’s Channel 4 pulls phone-ins
p2pnet.net news:- Yesterday p2pnet apologised for an apparently erroneous story in which we’d posted, “ITV 1 and itv 2 are still showing fixed and rigged, expensiven interactive call-in shows, despite what’s being reported”.
The subject was the ITV scandal in which the company was forced to take down its quiz channel ITV Play and suspend all premium-rate interactive services, text votes and red button interaction.
We were quoting an email from a reader in Europe who’d said, “all this next week (that’s all my EPG has) – including today and tomorrow – they are showing ‘Make Your Play’ and ‘Glitterball’. They haven’t stopped airing these types of shows.”
She contacted us again yesterday and said she’d made a mistake, but in the evening phoned to say maybe she hadn’t after all: that she was watching Glitterball as we spoke.
“I don’t have Five and Four, so I can’t say what’s really happening there,” she’d said in her earlier email.
Now, “Channel 4 has pulled phone-ins from its coverage of the Cheltenham Festival after discovering a problem on its horse racing show The Morning Line,” says the BBC.
“About 100 people were charged for calling a competition after lines had closed, chief executive Andy Duncan told a House of Commons committee.
“The mistake was discovered by auditors appointed to review Channel 4’s live phone-ins following recent problems. Mr Duncan said Channel 4 was contacting the callers to arrange refunds. The error was apparently due to a computer glitch at phone service provider Eckoh.”
The Beeb also has Duncan saying if competitions returned to its horse-racing coverage, Channel 4 would probably use “somebody else” to run the phone-in.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
erroneous story – ITV story incorrect, March 12, 2007
ITV scandal – Britain’s ‘fixed’ TV shows, March 9, 2007
BBC – Channel 4 admits new phone error, March 13, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
