BRITAIN:A number of BBC staff have been warned they face the sack for misleading viewers, as the corporation yesterday admitted to four more occasions when competitions and votes had been rigged.
Amid an increasingly febrile atmosphere, up to 25 employees are thought to be at risk, with Ric Blaxill, the director of programmes at digital radio station 6Music, yesterday becoming the most senior casualty to date when he resigned. Two of the rigged competitions revealed yesterday involved shows on 6Music, as did one of the six that came to light in July.
The BBC was fined £50,000 by broadcasting regulator Ofcom earlier this year for persuading a girl on a studio tour of the children's TV show Blue Peter to stand in as a competition winner and it yesterday also confirmed an online vote in January to find a name for the programme's new cat had been rigged. Richard Marson, the Blue Peter editor, is believed to have been sacked.
Its presenters will apologise on air on Tuesday after producers ignored votes for the name "Cookie" and called the cat "Socks" because it was felt to be more suitable. A new kitten, "Cookie", will now join the team alongside "Socks".
The new incidents came to light following a trawl of output going back to January 2005, after revelations about faked competitions on Comic Relief, Children in Need and others in July.
The BBC board said a culture had developed where staff had inadequate knowledge of editorial guidelines and some misguidedly believed the interests of the programme were "more important than honesty and fairness to the audience".
In both incidents involving 6Music programmes competition winners were made up because there were not enough entrants.
Popular BBC phone in competitions, including Match of the Day's Goal of the Month, will return from November, but BBC director general Mark Thompson said he expected a "significant reduction" in their volume and ordered them to be supervised at senior level.
The BBC refused to discuss disciplinary procedures for individual staff, but unions have expressed concern that junior staff are being made scapegoats, and tribunal hearings are expected to follow. -