The Secret Sound’s fine secret

Michael Hedges June 27, 2008

The games and contests radio stations play with listeners are meant to add to the entertainment. One UK broadcaster played a bit too much and the regulator imposed the biggest fine ever charged. Are contests and competitions good promotion or sleazy tricks? Or are radio ‘fun and games’ easy targets for poor losers and regulators?

UK media regulator OFCOM (Office for Communication) fined GCap Media £1.11 million (€1.4 million) last week as punishment for holding a competition on a radio station network deemed impossible to win. Two specific rules in the Broadcasting Code were violated; one on premium rate phone service use and the other on fair conduct of competitions. The regulator went punitive on finding “the first case of its kind in which the behavior of the licensee... had effectively hindered Ofcom's investigation.”

Last August GCap Media was fined by PhonepayPlus, the premium call regulator, £17,500 for violating premium rate telephone rules. It was the same contest. GCap Media stated at the time that the breach was “an isolated incident.” PhonepayPlus concluded it was “a manipulative practice.” Both the PhonepayPlus and OFCOM investigations centered on the radio contest on the air between January 15th and February 8th 2007.

Contests and competitions are in the fabric of radio broadcasting. The “Secret Sound” contest for radio is decades old. Radio legend places it first on a Dallas, Texas station in 1964. Somewhere in the world right now a radio station is enticing listeners with the “Secret Sound” contest. Somewhere in the UK a radio genius is lighting candles at Church, thankful for avoiding a worse fate.

Over the years the “Secret Sound” contest has taken on variations but the basic premise remains the same:  there’s a reward for listening now and, then, making contact. It is a contest to identify an ever-so-brief snip of audio. People phone in with their guess. Sometimes the snip is lengthened until the sound can be easily identified. There’s a prize; sometimes small, sometimes not.

Games and contests have also formed the backbone of a radio broadcasters marketing, the most successful causing public awareness (“street talk”) sufficiently raised to affect audience ratings positively.  Kept simple, the “Secret Sound” works quite well. Well-chosen sound snips can keep people guessing – and talking about the contest – for days, particularly if the prize gets bigger over time. And if a contest is good enough, local TV and newspapers follow the story.

Inevitably the sales manager will see a Golden opportunity. “Secret Sounds” have been variations on product placement: from car keys and burglar alarms to burgers sizzling and beer pouring. The GCap “Secret Sound” contest seems not to have been hatched in the sales department. Extending the contest artificially without having a winner kept the contest going and encouraged more people to enter, accumulating a nice little pile of cash from the premium rate phone toll charges.  That may or may not have been the plan. OFCOM found no evidence that GCap manipulated entries for any reason other than extending the contest.

Without a whistleblower bringing the scheme to regulators’ attention it would still be GCap’s little secret. According to OFCOM’s report, GCap Media’s share of the premium phone revenue was £42,000 (€53,000). Each of its 30 One Network stations were fined £37,000 (€46,800).

“For GCap employees responsible for the conduct of networked competitions to have deliberately and repeatedly prevented the prize from being won, disenfranchising all those listeners who paid to enter in the affected rounds, and deceiving 30 audiences as to the fair conduct of the competition, was inexcusable,” concluded the regulator.

Showing remarkable arrogance after being handed the largest single Broadcast Code violation fine, GCap Media’s official response was just short of ‘get over it.’ “The competition was held 16 months ago,” said a GCap spokesperson, quoted by the Independent, and the company has gone through two management changes and an ownership change. A company statement said “the new management are already putting in place new measures to build on the already improved controls implemented at GCap and the company has not run premium rate competitions of this kind for the last 12 months.” Perhaps they will get that whistleblower problem under control, too.

Abuse of premium rate phone service will always be an easy target for regulators. Television company ITV was fined £5.68 million in May for rigged phone voting. Interestingly, OFCOM in reports on both the ITV and GCap rules violations mentions “insufficient supervision.” One might wonder what all those highly paid executives are doing if not protecting the licenses.

Perhaps putting the sales manager in charge of contest and competitions isn’t such a bad idea. They are – usually – well trained in walking over hot coals. And every UK newspaper carried the 'Secret Sound' story on its front page.

Not every radio station contest, competition or promotion is rigged.  Some are great fun for listeners and very effective for station marketing. What are the good ones you have produced or heard? Send me the details.

And, too, regulations on broadcast contests vary from place to place. Tell me about the rules you work with… or enforce.