A good day to bury bad broadcasting news?

 by Martin Belam, 18 October 2007

For a second this morning I thought ITV had pulled off a "good day to bury bad news" trick of Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith proportions.

With Britian's media hacks camped outside the BBC's Television Centre all debating whether it would still be there next week, and, if it was, would there be anyone left to staff it, ITV appeared to quietly let slip the results of the inquiry into their phone call scandals.

BBC Television Centre

Actually, it turned out that it wasn't a masterstroke of media planning - the full report will in fact be published tomorrow. The headline figures leaking out appear to be quite eye-watering though. 10 million calls from the audience that were charged for and either not counted or not entered into competitions - with an estimated £8 million bonus for ITV as a side effect, which will now have to be paid back.

The rich man's Dick and Dom look downcast

It makes re-naming a cat on the basis of the advice given to you by your technical team look like small change, and even less of a sackable offence in comparison.

Oh noes I gotz da rong name

4 Comments

Yes, I just spotted that in my RSS reader. I wondered if the Sky press office might wish they'd picked a better day to announce they'd captured Dermot from the BBC.

If they'd announced it tomorrow, it'd look like they'd got him on voluntary redundo...

I did wonder whether the approval of Ads for International users of the website was also a little bit buried yesterday.

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