Not the final chapter in the GMTV phone-in scandal but another major development: Opera Telecom, the company responsible for running the competitions, has been fined a record £250,000 by the premium-line regulator ICSTIS, for selecting winners before competitions were closed — and, crucially, while viewers will still paying over £1 per call to phone in their votes. In all, some £20 million was made by GMTV over the span of four years and 18 million calls. “Cutting corners for the sake of convenience or to boost revenues is simply unacceptable and has serious consequences,” ICSTIS said in a statement. The regulator has also imposed a 12-month ban on Opera from running further competitions, although according to The Guardian this is suspended pending Opera implementing new practices and new management. (And as they like to say in TV….) Coming up next: GMTV’s fines for the same scandal, which could run into the millions of pounds, given the amount of money made out of it.
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