This morning’s Guardian had a fantastically ascerbic column from Emily Bell about Quiz TV programmes, and in particular the appalling ITV Play channel and programme block that runs through the night.
I’ll just give you a flavour of it by reproducing the last paragraph:
Michael Grade, the incoming executive chairman, should be judged on how he handles this. Given that he put quality programming at the top of his manifesto, he should shut down ITV Play immediately. It is not a case of climbing on the moral high ground, but recognising a sewer when you’re in one and stepping out of it pretty smartly.
Hear, hear Emily.
This follows last week’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on Call TV Quiz Shows (PDF). This report acknowledged that this new form of “entertainment” is simply falling between a rock and a hard place in terms of determining who should regulate it. The big problem with the chunky report is that it admits that it’ll be for the courts to determine whether these channels and programme strands are actually free draws, lotteries or gaming.
“Our view is that they should constitute gaming as defined under the Gambling Act 2005.” Note that this Act is not fully in force until September this year.
But “it seems to us that Call TV quiz shows should constitute gaming under the Gambling Act 2005, and DCMS and the Gambling Commission should consider this as a matter of urgency.”
It seems that things are going to continue as before until September at any rate.
There are some intriguing details in the report that show, whether it’s legally gambling or not, it displays all the attributes of gambling:
“We note with interest figures supplied by ITV, showing that 77% of entrants to ITV Play played fewer than five times a day but that the average number of entries played per entrant each day was six. A simple mathematical calculation shows that very high call volumes must be being generated by a minority of callers in order to produce an average call figure which is higher than the number of calls made by 77% of callers.”
I also approve of the committees findings in respect of cryptic games – most commonly represented by games where contestants are invited to “add all the numbers.” As things stand, there’s no explanation that the game is cryptic and non-trivial, and even if a correct answer is arrived at, there is no explanation about how it was arrived at. The games companies claim that this information is commercially sensitive.
The committee calls for a requirement that solutions to such games are lodged in advance with Ofcom, and consideration should made as to whether brief explanations of the correct answer should also be broadcast. This is something that I wholeheartedly agree with.
I also believe that the displaying of odds for calls to get through is absolutely not insurmountable as the gaming companies claim. They know call volumes since that’s how they determine which callers to take to air. Converting this into an onscreen graphic would be trivial.
“We accept that there may be practical difficulties for operators in displaying a figure purporting to show the odds of any viewer getting through to the studio by making a call at that particular moment, but we believe that they are not insurmountable. We are firmly of the view that there should be more transparency about the factual information on which a calculation of the odds would be based. At present, the variables which are the most central to the calculation remain within the exclusive knowledge of the broadcasters and producers and may be under their direct control. Their telephony systems register the volume of calls coming in and it is they who decide what proportion of callers should be randomly selected, and how frequently callers should be put through to the studio.”
“It is doubtful whether the majority of viewers, let alone any first time callers, would be likely to
appreciate that their calls might be among as many as 6,000 calls made during one minute. We also doubt whether many viewers would appreciate that when the volume of incoming calls is low, the result may be that no-one is given the chance to win a prize until enough calls have come in to make it justifiable ‘in simple economic terms’.”
“We recommend that broadcasters should be required to display some recent historical information about volume of incoming calls, with an indication of the odds of being connected to the studio. The operators and regulators should together devise a model for prescribing what information should be provided and how often. We acknowledge that considerable care will need to be taken to ensure that the information given to viewers will indeed increase transparency.”
Meanwhile ICSTIS, the regulatory body for premium rate phone lines, has published its own rules today. A summary is here (PDF), and the full document here (PDF).
They’ve determined three main improvements that they feel the industry can make:
1. Ensuring that presenters give spoken reminders of the price of calling at least every ten minutes.
2. Call providers should let callers know every time they’ve spent £10 on services every day, and let you know your cumulative call spend.
3. Greater transparancy about the chances of getting through to the studio or not.
At the moment, these are just proposals from ICSTIS, who’s soliciting replies by 12 March 2007. I suspect that they’re aware, as is the industry as a whole, that if they don’t buck their ideas up, they’re going to regulated out of existance.
One final note: a couple of TV reports into this didn’t really make clear the fact that it’s not so much people hanging on the phone interminably that earns that companies so much money, as the repeat dialling nature of these programmes. With research showing some people making a new call every 8 seconds, that’s a lot more of a revenue spinner than spurious “holding.”