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Asian Network named in voting scam
20th September, 2007

An internal BBC investigation found that several radio stations, including Asian Network, were guilty of manipulating competitions and deceiving listeners.

A report published by the BBC today admitted that there had been four more breaches of editorial guidelines in addition to the six that emerged in July.

The breaches included one at BBC Asian Network's Film Café show on 17th February 2007.

It has emerged that audience votes for two categories for the Film Cafe Bollywood awards were disregarded. A member of the production team effectively over-ruled the audience choice, once as a result of an error in reading results and once on the basis that the genuine winner was unavailable for interview.

The Film Café show was hosted by DJs Raj and Pablo. It has was taken off air earlier this year as part of programme changes and replaced by a longer show called Love Bollywood.

But it is not made clear who was involved in making the decision.

A BBC spokesperon told AIM magazine: "All appropriate measures have now been taken in accordance with the BBC disciplinary process."

The BBC Trust said it was "very concerned" by revelations of the new breaches.

Around 25 people will be disciplined over the new incidents, according to the Media Guardian website today.

In another incident, a poll run on Blue Peter to name a cat was disregarded. The programme's producers decided to name the cat 'Socks' despite popular public opinion favouring 'Cookie'.

In response to criticism when news of the poll scams was first revealed in July, director general Mark Thompson stopped all competitions on the BBC.

Today he told the BBC Trust that a review of output was near completion and the corporation was delivering "a package of tough and rigorous measures" to address concerns over the competition and voting scams.

It is expected that the BBC will renew competitions in November again.




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