ITV’s breakfast viewers are said to have been cheated out of an estimated £10 million a year, because winners of premium-rate phone-ins were chosen before the phone lines closed.

A Panorama programme on BBC One tonight will say that, over a four-year period, millions of viewers of GMTV were encouraged to enter premium-rate quizzes costing up to £1.80 a time even though they had no hope of success. The allegations are a big embarrassment for ITV, which had launched an internal inquiry to find any evidence of viewer deception, but failed to uncover a practice that cost viewers an estimated £45,000 each weekday.

It also reignites the series of phone-in scandals, which left no major broadcaster untouched. Viewers were invited to call premium-rate lines for competitions that they had no hope of winning on shows ranging from Blue Peter on BBC One to Richard and Judy on Channel 4. There will also be further questions for Channel 4, amid evidence that a similar deception on Richard and Judy, revealed earlier this year, dates back to before summer 2004.

It is understood that Eckoh, the programme’s technology supplier, has calculated that 3 million of out of 6.7 million calls were made by viewers who had no chance of winning its You Say, We Pay competition.

If viewers were to be refunded, the cost to the broadcaster and the programme’s producers would be about £2.25 million.

Panorama’s principal claim, though, is that GMTV’s telephone provider, Opera Interactive Technology, had finalised shortlists of potential winners long before the competition phone lines had closed.

Mark Nuttall, a sales director at the company, learnt what was going on in 2003, but he sent an e-mail to colleagues, copied to his boss, asking for it to be kept secret from GMTV, saying: “Make sure they never find out you are picking the winners early!” Ofcom, the communications’ regulator, is understood to have begun a formal inquiry into GMTV, which could lead to a significant fine for the programme’s parent company, which is 75 per cent owned by ITV plc and 25 per cent owned by Walt Disney.

GMTV claims to be Europe’s most popular breakfast television programme, with six million viewers tuning to watch Andrew Castle, Kate Garraway and Lorraine Kelly on ITV1 at various times between 6am and 9.25am. Its website tries to reassure viewers that its competitions are fair by publishing a list of winners, for daily prizes that have included a Mazda MX-5 and £20,000 in cash in April alone.

ITV, which is run by Michael Grade, declined to comment yesterday, saying that GMTV was an independently run business and was not a part of its internal audit.

The breakfast broadcaster, though, conceded that there were “certain irregularities in the way Opera has been managing GMTV interactive services in the past”. But GMTV said that it was not aware of what its telephone provider was up to, while Opera itself said: “There is not a shred of truth in any of these allegations.”

One viewer and regular player, Christine Kielczki from Reading, said: “I would usually play two to three times in a week, maybe more. I feel let down and disappointed to think that you’re playing these games . . . with no hope of actually winning.”

Costly calls

£45,000 Estimated cost to ITV viewers every weekday

3m Calls to You Say, We Pay with no chance of winning

£2.25m Estimated cost to Channel 4 and programme producer of making refunds to viewers

Source: Panorama, Eckoh

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