Ofcom has ruled that Absolute Radio breached the Broadcasting Code after finding that a breakfast show competition was not conducted fairly.
The case concerned a feature on The Dave Berry Breakfast Show which ran between 3rd and 7th March this year.
Listeners were invited to text in their names for the chance to be randomly selected to play a quiz on air. Each contestant was given a series of questions, and the amount of money won depended on how they answered and what choices they made at the end of the round.
Two complaints were made to Ofcom about how the promotion was run. The complainants said they were unclear about which day’s draw they had entered, and whether all listeners had an equal chance of being selected.
Station owner, Bauer explained that a single pool of entries was used across the week, instead of separate daily entry pools as the on-air trails had implied. This meant that the chance of being chosen decreased as more people entered over the five days.
Ofcom said this was a “significant condition” that should have been explained to audiences in advance, and therefore the competition misled listeners.
The regulator also found a separate breach on the final day. Ofcom said that 126 people texted in to take part in the competition on 7th March but were excluded from the draw because the three contestants had already been chosen from the earlier pool that morning.
Although Bauer offered those affected the chance to win £2,000 in a follow-up prize draw, Ofcom ruled this did not change the fact that the original competition had not been run fairly.
In response, Bauer accepted that human error was involved and told Ofcom it had taken steps to prevent future issues. These included refreshing training for production teams, clarifying competition terms on air and in writing, and tightening compliance checks around listener promotions.
Ofcom welcomed these changes but concluded that listeners were not given the information they needed to understand how the competition worked, and that Absolute Radio had therefore breached the Broadcasting Code on two counts, Rules 2.13 and 2.15.
This story first appeared on radiotoday.co.uk