Radio Hartlepool has fallen foul of media regulator Ofcom with their Classic 9 at 9 feature. The community station plays nine tracks and invites listeners to guess the year of origin they share.
Though not a listener competition, the presenter will sometimes encourage listeners to text in an answer at 25p per message.
A listener complained to Ofcom that some of the shows sounded as though they had been pre-recorded so there was no way that respondents had a chance to hear their text being acknowledged on air.
In response to the media regulator’s query, Radio Hartlepool had been pre-recorded and that, ‘on these occasions, the presenter's references to named listeners and the contents of their text messages had been fictitious.’
Ofcom found the station to be in breach of Rule 2.2 of the code and pointed out that similar breaches had already been recorded and acted upon at other stations including Dream 100 FM and On Your Radio, West Dunbartonshire.
In summation, the media regulator has recorded the breach on Radio Hartlepool’s record and will be meeting with the station to discuss compliance procedures that should already have been in place.
