ITV presenters Ant and Dec have had the smile wiped off their faces after they were told to return the prize given to them at the 2005 British Comedy awards.
ITV has revealed that the Catherine Tate show received more votes than Ant and Dec for the People’s Choice Award.
The TV station admitted that Robbie Williams was invited to present the award, and he agreed to do so, on the condition that Ant and Dec win the award. ITV complied with this in order to secure his attendance at the event.
The report indicated that there is no evidence to suggest that Ant and Dec knew of this deal, and are reportedly “absolutely appalled” by the situation.
This is extremely bad timing due to the fact that media-regulator Ofcom has just fined ITV £5.68 million over its use of premium rate phone lines.
Clearly these blunders from ITV are pretty horrendous, what they could be facing is limited sales on the phone-ins and a considerable drop in viewer numbers, especially if people believe Ant and Dec were in on the award deception.
Though it appears the TV station decided to come clean of their own accord, it seems obvious the only reason they did was because they figured they’d be found out eventually anyway, which they probably would have.
Honesty is of course the best policy as they say, however this announcement is rather wasted given that all of these blunders have been based on lies.
Who is going to want to enter phone-in competitions when they suspect their money is just going straight in ITV’s pocket, and what family will sit down to Saturday night TV with Ant and Dec when it appears they lied to get a measly comedy award.
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