Fair enough

Seems fair enough. These "quizzes" are really lotteries, so they ought to tell viewers exactly what the odds are.

Good for them.

Finally it seems we have an industry regulator with some teeth and the will to use them. I can't imagine these quite drastic changes being made if the decision was being made by (F*ck) Ofcom.

Moron tax.

These quizzes are nothing more than a moron tax...

“Win a [something] – just tell us who was the first person on the moon, was it A) Armstrong, B) a monkey or C) a Dalek” call 09 number, £1.5 a minute.

Ooh! I know the answer! I better call quick and win!!!

Now, people who call when they see this deserve to get ripped off.

Big deal...

I can recall evidence to a select commitee rubbishing the idea of indicating the number of callers on screen as it was impossible to do.

No doubt they'll bend the rules as far as possible to make it far from obvious you've bugger all chance of getting through.

One of the claims on the recent "Panorama" programme was that even on the "reputable" quiz shows the presenter was frequently instructed to say "I can't believe no one is calling in about this" when there were in fact tens of thousands of callers not being selected.

No one checks up on that kind of thing: they just rely on whistle blowers.

Oh and then the presenters pratt about incessanltly. Get all pally with the viewers, read out letters, dance about etc etc. All with one purpose in mind: to waste time so they get more money out of the mugs that phone in.

Oh and there are the "mathematical puzzles" where the method of working them out is never given.

For example:

Add up all the numbers:

1 + 2 =

FIVE - SIX =

etc.

So do you add up the answers? Add up the numbers as well? Is the number SIX or minus SIX? What about those letters IV and IX those are Roman numerals aren't they?

With enough of those ambiguities there are thousands of possibilities.

The presenter always says something like "are you clever enough to work this out?" An honest quiz would be "pick a number between 1 and 10,000". The fact that they are allowed to imply there is any skill involved is little short of legalised fraud.

How else do they get the money?

Television companies are using premium rate phone ins to make up for the ever decreasing revenues they are getting from advertisers. With many households having access to dozens or even hundreds of TV channels there is a fall off of viewers to each channel resulting in the channels having to reduce their advertising rates. Time shifting of TV using Sky+, V+ and similar PVR's means many viewers are fast forwarding through ad breaks which again reduces the price that companies are willing to pay to get their adverts screened.

Premium rate phone ins for quizzes and voting are increasingly being used to generate revenue to make up for advertising losses. I would imagine that having prominent onscreen odds of winning will put off a large number of potential callers. How will the many TV companies cope with financing their channels with dwindling advertising revenue and revenue losses from the premium rate rip-offs that they run?

The closure of analogue TV channels over the next few years will result in a significant reduction in viewers of the five main analogue channels. It remains to be seen how they will cope with this loss.