Corruption of the body mind and soul: ITV and the BBC in the dock M’Lud

I was watching – Lawrence Lessig giving a keynote about his next intellectual journey, the journey into the world of corruption.

Of course his research touches on the law, he’s a law professor, but Lessig also reaches out to touch philosophical issues, societal issues, and media issues.

Whilst watching this video I wondered in what valuable context could I use what Lessig had to say. I did not have to wait long.

We are all aware of the drama that unfolded around the BBC as it became apparent that a documentary about the Queen no less had been badly doctored to suit a production company’s quest for christ knows what – Ratings coupled neatly with the whole phone in scandal from Blue Peter to Red Nose Day. Have a read of our research into this area . Is nothing sacred?

But today we learn that ITV faces a, c’mon wait for it…. A whopping ?70m fine after viewers were cheated out of millions of ???? in premium phone-ins. And, popular Saturday shows were at the epicentre of deception. As advertising revenues are drying up, the quest is on to replace them… this is the link between Lessig, corruption in all its ugly beauty and ITV and RDF and the BBC.

ITV last night faced the prospect of a fine of up to ?70m after some of its flagship Saturday night shows were at the centre of the most blatant examples yet of viewer deceit involving premium phone lines. Admitting a “serious cultural failure within ITV”, its executive chairman, Michael Grade, said he was shocked by the scale of the revelations.

Viewers wasted ?7.8m on premium phone calls they thought were influencing their favourite programmes, including those featuring Ant and Dec and Simon Cowell, with the full bill for the scandal running to ?18m.

And shares once again in ITV have dropped

And back to the theme of Lessig’s new project in the Observer Leader article Primetime robbery from the BBC and ITV

TV chairman Michael Grade said last week that an inquiry into the misuse of premium-rate telephone competitions on his channel had found ‘no corruption, no venality and no criminality’.

Ahem… no corruption, no venality, no criminality ? Why? Indeed the Observer Leader states

This was a collective abandonment of professional ethics. Reaping financial reward from competition entries took priority over honest dealing with entrants. The viewers were parted from their money on a pretence. In other words: corruption, venality and, quite possibly, criminality too.

– Is it the end of the affair? and here for CDB archives on ITV as we individually and collectively question the role of organisations, media and business in civic society in the 21st Century

Companies are from Mars and Customers are from Venus, And US Airways is right up there with the best of them and this next paragraph from the Leader article is very important to demonstrate why ITV failed so utterly…

The problem is that ITV does not traditionally see its viewers as customers, but rather as a commodity. They are counted up and sold, as a package of consumer eyeballs, to the real clients – the advertisers. But when ITV started charging people directly for participation in shows, its business model changed. The fact that its working practices did not take account of this new commercial reality testifies to colossal management failure.

To me this says it all about how large media brands see their customers. And why that perception blinds them the the world we live in today. The concepts of “Ownership,” “Arrogance,” “Greed,” “Avarice,” all bleed into eachother, poisoning the mind, deluding the soul that what you are doing is quite OK.

Because we have to make a profit. But the question is at what price? and at whose expense?

For me the world we are working hard to create and build via Engagement, Social Networking, Collaboration, all point towards a desire for greater transparency, trust, collaboration, co-creation, shared ownership and shared rewards.

Interestingly for me anyway, what they represent are the value and core components that enabled early civilisation to develop and grow, These are core human values, these are the values that enabled us to survive. What this tells me is that we are at the end of our Belle Epoque and its time to move on

The Observer Leader finishes

ITV, meanwhile, seeing its income fall as a result of increased competition, latched on to the quick fix of premium-rate phone-ins. That served the dual purpose of raising cash and maintaining a pretence of ‘interactivity’.

The two biggest players in terrestrial British television have been, in their own different ways, bluffing on a grand scale. They have pretended to adapt to the new media age without really understanding or managing the changes in their industry. It is we, the viewers, via the licence fee or the phone bill, who have bankrolled this complacency. We were robbed.

And indeed we were. I would suggest to Lawrence Lessig, that this particular period in British Broadcasting history becomes a part of his research and study into the murky world of Corruption.

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Posted in: 7th Mass Media, Advertising, Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Distribution, Economics, Ethics, Government & Politics, Law, Media, Mobile, Philosophy, Television, US Airways, Web/Tech

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