Ant and Dec suffer phone-in blunders

Oct 19 2007 By Tom Patterson, The Journal

ANT and Dec’s flagship ITV1 show was among a number of programmes that suffered a string of phone-in blunders caused by a “serious cultural failure” within the company, chairman Michael Grade said yesterday.

A long-awaited review found “serious editorial issues” in shows, and Mr Grade promised a comprehensive scheme to reimburse affected viewers.

He said he knew the report would make “deeply uncomfortable reading’’ and admitted: “My overall conclusion from the review is that there was a serious cultural failing within ITV.’’

ITV will have to pay £7.8m in viewer reimbursements, and the total cost of the clean-up – including phone-in problems at GMTV – will come to £18m.

Mr Grade apologised to viewers. However no heads will roll as a result of the findings, with Mr Grade saying he wished to avoid a culture of blame.

One of ITV1’s most popular shows, The X Factor, opens its vote lines tomorrow, and Mr Grade promised: “We are absolutely confident it will be clean as a whistle.”

Last night Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly said they were “extremely disappointed” by what had happened.

McPartlin said: “We’d like to make it clear that we had no idea these problems existed.”