Two senior producers were forced to quit the BBC yesterday, after the corporation admitted that producers had fixed four more audience votes and competitions.

Richard Marson, a former editor of Blue Peter, was dismissed, and Ric Blaxill, the head of programmes for the digital radio station 6 Music resigned – taking the total number of enforced departures at the broadcaster to three.

Mr Blaxill, a former Top of the Pops executive producer and creative director of Capital Radio, is the most senior of the casualties. He quit as the BBC admitted that production staff invented fictitious winners on the Clare McDonnell show and the Tom Robinson programme, both on 6 Music.

Mr Marson was forced out after the BBC also confirmed The Times’s report that producers had overruled an audience vote on the naming of the current Blue Peter cat, Socks.

Blue Peter faces new scandal

It has emerged that production staff ignored the result of a viewer poll to choose a name for the Blue Peter cat last year

Background

• BBC fined £50,000 for Blue Peter scandal

• BBC boss and the Queen’s ‘huff’

• Time to hang up on TV phone-ins

• GMTV cheated 25m of its phone-in callers

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The producer was also in charge when production staff on the programme had faked the result of a phone-in competition, by picking a child from the audience who was told to pretend to answer the question via a telephone next to the studio because the phone lines had failed.

The remaining breach followed an audience vote for awards winners on the Bollywood programme Film Café, on the BBC Asian Network, another digital station. Two winners were selected not by the audience but by the production staff.

The disclosures today prompted a warning from the BBC Trust that bosses had “failed to apply satisfactory editorial controls” in children’s, entertainment and other “nonnews” programmes. Headed by Sir Michael Lyons, the body said that it also “endorses the firm grip taken by Mark Thompson” over the affair. However, Mark Thompson, the Director-General, indicated that he now believed that the BBC had found all the examples of lapses in standards. He told employees that while the BBC was “not out of the woods” the latest disclosures meant that the broadcaster could “definitely see daylight ahead”.

BBC insiders said that no more enforced departures were expected, because the broadcaster believes that the four latest revelations, on top of six admissions in July, represent the last of the disclosures it has to make. Despite the controversies, the broadcaster also intends to reintroduce some on-air competitions – currently suspended – in the next few weeks.

On Tuesday, Leona McCambridge, a producer on the programme was dismissed by the BBC for gross misconduct, for allowing a faked phone-in to run on the Liz Kershaw programme.

Blue Peter will transmit an apology on September 25. Socks was the name chosen by producers for the BBC cat, after viewers had chosen an alternative in an online poll. The corporation said yesterday that the name picked by viewers was Cookie.

Blue Peter is to introduce a further kitten to the programme next week who will be given the name Cookie as voted for by viewers. Socks will also remain on the team.

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