OTTAWA – Puzzled over numerous complaints regarding a TV call-in contest, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has concluded its numbers don’t stand up to scrutiny. The complaints concern L’instant gagnant, a television call-in contest program broadcast on V seven evenings a week, starting in the late evening and continuing into the morning of the next day. The program is produced and paid for by TéléMedia InteracTV.
L’instant gagnant is the most recent version of a contest program in which the host invites viewers to telephone the program to solve various games and puzzles in order to win a cash prize. The CBSC received multiple complaints about episodes of the program that aired between March 5 and September 28, 2012. Complainants were concerned about different aspects of the program, including the length of time it took for a successful caller to reach the studio, the provision of clues as the games progressed, the use of special effects to entice viewers to call, and the solutions of some of the puzzles.
The Quebec Regional Panel examined the complaints under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics and found that some of the puzzles “lacked transparency and therefore violated the Contest provision of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics.” In particular, it failed to meet the transparency requirements of Clause 12 of the CAB Code of Ethics for its games that involve the addition of numbers. The panel found that even though a solution was displayed on screen, the “methodology was not evident or transparent; even with additional explanations from the broadcaster, the methodology was questionable.”
V provided the CBSC with more detailed explanations on the methodology used to arrive at the solutions given for some of the games cited in the complaints. Based on those explanations, the panel was able to validate some of the suggested solutions, but was unable to validate them all.
The panel added that it had no way of investigating the telephone system, so it could not make any comments about how calls are selected. It also found no problem with the fact that the host would give clues as the games progressed or with the use of flashing imagery and sound effects designed to create excitement.
