Brit TV Stations Cheat Viewer Phone-ins

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The media systems are always seeking ways to make money off of gullible people. Starting with Big Brother 6 years ago, the business of luring foolish viewers to call into shows and then making money off of the phone charges, has grown like weeds. Now, in England, it is revealed that these shows were cheating people calling in, getting them to stay on line until $3 or more was charged or by having winners chosen early on but keeping the lines open for hours just to make more money. How sweet of them.

From the Independent:

This deception of viewers on such a vast scale represents one of the greatest crises in confidence in British television since commercial TV began more than half a century ago. The scandal has been steadily growing amid revelations that more and more television shows are implicated.

None of the major terrestrial broadcasters, including the BBC, has remained untainted. Last night's investigation by the BBC investigative programme Panorama contained the most damaging allegations yet, suggesting that millions of viewers of ITV's GMTV breakfast show had been duped into making premium-rate phone-calls for competitions they had no chance of winning because the winners had already been chosen.

The alleged swindle, which is denied by Opera Interactive Technology, is thought to have generated £45,000 a day (or £10m a year) in wasted calls and to have resulted from alleged malpractice that has been going on for four years. GMTV yesterday said it had terminated its contract with Opera Interactive Technology with immediate effect after its own inquiries had revealed "irregularities''"in the system.

Far from being unknowingly deceived by the Opera operatives, all the TV station owners and the programmers loved this foul system. Revenues for ads are declining because Britain doesn't have a very energetic economy. The article notes that some quiz shows would have really stupid questions that anyone could answer as a lure to get the maximum number of callers, for example.

Other shows used a sort of, actually very much like 'Brave New World' sort of entertainment whereby the watchers could press a red button to 'vote' what would happen next. It turns out this was a total scam. The show was pre-set and it didn't matter what the pigeons on the other side of the screen pecked at, the results were the same.

Indeed, all this is very much like living in a Skinner box only you don't get fed, it steals from you! Great going. This reminds me of our own economic system: as we lose money, we are told that we are getting richer and we are encouraged to 'vote' for things but these are not really tallied.

From the Washington Post:

Federal regulators, concerned about the effect of television violence on children, will recommend that Congress enact legislation to give the government unprecedented powers to curb violence in entertainment programming, according to government and TV industry sources.

The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that regulating TV violence is in the public interest, particularly during times when children are likely to be viewers -- typically between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., FCC sources say.

I guess that will kill all those Tom and Jerry or nearly every single Walt Disney cartoon ever made not to mention Popeye or Woody Woodpecker. Not to mention nearly any kiddie TV show. Defining 'violence' is difficult. In some cultures or life forms, just looking sharply at someone is considered violent. Some violence leads to imitation while some doesn't and censoring stuff is stupid since this is all about free choice. Many parents don't care if their kids watch violent stuff. Some don't care if they watch mass murderers in movies kill one person after another. Over the years, I noticed that lower-income families really like this stuff.

Teenagers love it and try telling a 12 year old, they can't see a violent movie all the 18 year olds are seeing! Instead of controlling access to guns, we will control all the content of all our media, practicing Soviet-style censorship, etc. Great.

We will still see one mass murderer after another. Today, in Houston yet again, another mass murderer went on the rampage and killed several people before being killed. In a very rich neighborhood. He used a gun, of course.

So, we will all have the capacity to kill many people but will not have the right to watch many movies or cartoons or read many books or play video games, or whatever? Right? And this is freedom.

Gun nuts like to pretend having guns will make us free. But our country isn't free at all, we have zillions of rules and regulations and they are growing by the hour and the more people use guns, the more our freedoms are restricted! So far from freeing us, these pieces of equipment are making us less and less free.

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Comments

[DeVaul]

Being charged money while calling into a radio or TV show! Never heard of this scam.

There are so many now. When a society gives itself over to incessant lying and disinformation, scams soon follow like a swarm of locusts.

[JSmith]

"The media systems are always seeking ways to make money off of gullible people. Starting with Big Brother 6 years ago, the business of luring foolish viewers to call into shows and then making money off of the phone charges, has grown like weeds."

OK... let's think about this for a minute. Did someone threaten these people if they didn't call in? "Vote now or the kid gets it!" I doubt that very much. Aren't people who call into shows someone's natural prey? I can't get worked up about this very much at all.

"Instead of controlling access to guns, we will control all the content of all our media, practicing Soviet-style censorship, etc."

Apparently something needs to be controlled. Last week you posted about cultural influences that lead to a violent society - isn't media violence one of those influences?

"Defining 'violence' is difficult. ... Some violence leads to imitation while some doesn't and censoring stuff is stupid since this is all about free choice."

That's so. Which is why kids get to watch so much violence. And there's artistic expression as well as free choice - that show wouldn't be as dramatic if those people didn't get shot to pieces, would it?

So I suppose the easier path is to control the tools. Here's a proposal to ban certain kitchen knives:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

I use a 9" Wusthof chef's knife, which is very sharply pointed. I suppose the solution to knife violence is to buy my roasts or chickens pre-cooked and pre-sliced.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Yup!

Conning people into schemes is old stuff. And there are laws about scamming people. For example, pyramid schemes are illegal in many places except Wall Street (heh).

Controlling content: I believe everyone should control their own content. Passing laws doing this is futile and stupid. As I said before, people WANT mass murder and LOVE bloodshed.

I didn't call for an end to this, I simply explained our culture and why we do this. Just like the Romans wanted circus and bread even as their empire imploded and the citizens ended up dead as barbarians burned Rome down and destroyed everything, so it is with us: we want death and we will get it. In spades.

I called for an end to all the weeping and wailing and demands that the world sympathize with us. We are drenched in blood and love every drop of it.

[JSmith]

"I believe everyone should control their own content."

Where do you stand on kitchen knives?

[DeVaul]

"Where do you stand on kitchen knives?"

I sharpen mine every night before I go to bed.

As for gun control, I think it is a lost cause in so far as preventing mentally ill and former felons from getting their hands on a gun. There are just too many now for sale on the black market. Our country is saturated with them.

Personally, I feel that the 2nd Amendment was placed there for a reason. It was meant to show Americans what they would need to do if the First Amendment was taken from them.

Gun nuts cannot figure this out. They ride around with bumper stickers that say: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. They miss the point of the 2nd Amendment entirely, and the government fosters this confusion.

The bumper stickers should say: When guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns.

Outlaws do not take away our First Amendment rights. Only governments do that.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Note how revolutionary gun nuts are. Heh. Probably the easiest people to con into supporting their enslavers.

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