QuizCall's Number is Up
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV On Quiz Call, 1 June 2006 at 20:50, the "Number Up" competition invited viewers to "Complete the Phrases". Each phrase began with a number between one and ten.
When the competition ended, the remaining unidentified answers were revealed. A
viewer believed the answer revealed for "Ten", which was "Tentacles", was unfair, as
it was a single word, not a phrase.
Channel 4 said that this was the first time this particular competition had been featured and, in light of the complainants comments, it had revisited the game and tightened the rules so that words would be avoided and only phrases would be used in future. The broadcaster also confirmed that subsequent broadcasts in which the Number Up competition was featured would show the numbers numerically, not written as words, to avoid single words being formed by adding characters to the written number. The complainant had been offered five free calls to future competitions!
Ofcom welcome Channel 4s prompt acknowledgment and measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again. However, Ofcom does not consider that this was necessarily a matter of tightening the rules as Channel 4 Breached rule 2.11 (Competitions should be conducted fairly, prizes should be described accurately and rules should be clear and appropriately made known).
In this case, the broadcaster asked the viewers to call in and "Complete the Phrase", but the answer "Tentacles" is not a phrase and it would have therefore been almost impossible for callers to guess the correct answer. As a result, some callers were likely to have been unfairly rejected.
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