OTTAWA – Encouraging people to enter a contest which had already been drawn is a no-no, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said today.
The CBSC said in a press release today Rogers Media’s Kiss FM Ottawa (CISS-FM) violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Code of Ethics for broadcasting misleading information about eligibility for the first of two draws to win a trip to Jamaica.
The station ran a contest in January 2019 for two trips to Jamaica and to enter the contest, listeners had to send a text message to the station in response to a question or topic posed by the hosts, explains the CBSC release. Winners were then randomly selected from amongst those entrants. The first draw was on January 11 and the second on January 18.
According to the contest rules, the draws took place at 6 a.m. in Ottawa but the winners were not announced on air until later in the morning. On January 11, the hosts, even after 6 a.m., encouraged listeners to send in texts and the winner wasn’t announced until 8:12 a.m.
A listener complained that anyone texting between 6 a.m. and 8:12 a.m. were therefore “wasting their time”. The station responded that the draw had indeed been done at 6 in accordance with the official rules and the hosts’ comments had “simply been to build excitement and provide dramatic effect,” reads the release.
Plus, the station emphasized any entrants who either did not win the first draw or submitted texts after the first draw would be entered into the second draw so regardless of any on-air statements, no entrants were disadvantaged.
The CBSC English-Language Panel disagreed, saying “the verbal inducements to enter for the first draw when that draw had actually already taken place were misleading” and therefore contrary to the CAB code. “The Panel acknowledged that stations want to build excitement for their contests and that the hosts had not intended to be misleading, but they did give listeners the false impression that there were still two chances to win when really there was only one,” says the release.
