A complaint has been lodged with Ofcom regarding a feature during The Breakfast Show with Tim Shaw on Kerrang! 105.2 in April this year. The feature was called Dole or no Dole and was created as a humorous take on the television programme Deal or no Deal.
The single listener who complained said that the apparent premise of the competition – the presenter ringing unsuspecting members of the public, who may or may not have been claiming state benefits, so that competitors could guess how many benefits they were claiming – was offensive and ?vindictive?.
Emap, which owns Kerrang!, told Ofcom that the calls were actually a pre-recorded ?set up?. The calls had been edited so that the person who was contacted sounded genuinely offended.
Tim introduced the competition by saying that it involved competitors guessing, by the sound of somebody?s voice, whether they were on benefits ? ?what we gotta do is…make a few calls?I?m going to put them on hold?you?ve got to guess?whether or not they?re on the dole or not?. He then went on to list a number of social security benefits including incapacity benefit, job seeker?s allowance and motability. Pretending to be from an income consolidation company, he called two people, apparently waking them, to ask about the benefits that they were on.
But because Kerrang! dropped the feature as soon as they heard a complaint had been made, Ofcom took no action, and now considers the matter resolved.