After some high-profile scandals involving phone-ins to TV programmes, the BBC has yet again found itself at the centre of controversy. This time, viewers were asked to vote on who they thought would win the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest, a competition which, quite clearly, had finished some 25 years previously.
The programme, presented by Graham Norton, called "The 1972 Eurovision Song Contest", was run on Saturday night, unedited from its original transmission. Viewers were asked at the end of the song portion of the programme to vote for their favourite entry, despite the fact that the winner had been common knowledge for over a quarter of a century. Some 1.7 million calls were made to the premium rate line, some to complain about the fact that the show was in black-and-white.
Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, has promised a full enquiry. "We are concerned, after recent problems, that mistakes are still being made," he said at a press conference, "but, as long as the vast majority of the British viewing public continue to behave as though they had the minds of single-celled bacteria, we will continue to do this kind of thing."
OFCOM have hinted that the BBC must clean up its act. Recently, the BBC were criticised for asking viewers to phone in questions to be put to Florence Nightingale and, last year, there were calls for the BBC trust to resign after a phone vote during "Blue Peter" on whether or not Christ should be crucified.
