Biggest TV Complaints Of All Time

0:00At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt, and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co-design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high-performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in-store, online, and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than anything.

0:59So no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone all protected with end-to-end encryption It's time for whatsapp message privately with everyone learn more at whatsapp.com

1:15Hello and welcome to this episode of the rest is entertainment with me marina hyde and me richard osmond Good morning slash afternoon slash evening marina to whichever one you're celebrating currently. How are you? I'm really really well. How are you? I'm very happy. We're back in the studio together It's nice, isn't it? Yes. You've seen Taylor this week and I've celebrated Christmas on House of Games. We might do an item about that one, why we celebrate Christmas in June, traditionally in television. And what else are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about a sort of tale of four movies.

1:43Yes. Inside Out 2, which is done brilliantly. The Donald Trump movie, The Apprentice, which can't find a US distributor. It's a shame. Coppola's movie, Megalopolis, his kind of giant passion slash vanity project, which has found a distributor. And a very interesting AI written movie. more on that later but also i think we're going to talk a little bit about taylor swift because you went to the gig so i want to hear about it but b i think uh yeah it's become so ridiculously ubiquitous i think we need to talk about why yes it is what's happening everybody what's happening with taylor swift yeah shall we talk first about complaints most complained about ever tv ofcom the media regulator has released its top 10 most complained about tv events in its history and they're quite interesting and the sort of trends they show and just the business of making complaints about television.

2:31Would you like me to do the top 10 list? I would absolutely love you to do it. I hope you've got like a kind of Fluff Freeman type. I say Fluff Freeman, he was the Clara Ampho of his day for younger listeners. Yes, okay. The most complained about one was... Are you starting at number one? Wow. You've got to do... Okay, sorry. No, I'm not Richard. Of course I'm starting at number 10 because I'm learning from you every day. No, listen. You start where you want. If you have a way you want to do it, just traditionally, you wouldn't go. Oh, you're doing it that way. And then most excitingly of all, number 10.

3:03People listen and go, well, I know what number one is. I have to keep listening because I really need to know what number 10 was. Once again, you score me. Let's go to the coronation in 2023 because that is number 10, Richard. Yes, it is. That's good. What's number one? Now, this was when the Bridgerton actress, Joa Ando, said about the balcony that it looked terribly white. So that was very complained about. In at number nine, this is going all the way back to 2005, by far the oldest complaint on the list, Jerry Springer, The Opera. At number eight, it's Dan Wooten and Lawrence Fox on GB News when Lawrence Fox insulted the journalist Ava Evans.

3:42I'm a celeb 2020. I think this was during the pandemic. By the way, people complained so much in the pandemic, which we'll come to. I think that's about animals, non-invasive species She's being introduced to Wales by the medium of the Bush Chucker trial. Yeah. 2021, Love Island, Faye's Behaviour Towards Teddy. Oh, no, hang on. I've missed out Julia Hartley Brewer on Talk TV. A lot of people have missed that out. A lot of people have missed that out. Sort of rating at 20 ,000 or something. Then there's Love Island, Faye's Behaviour Towards Teddy. At number four, Britain's Got Talent 2020. Diversity did a Black Lives Matter-inspired performance.

4:15The fourth most complained about in the TV history. People thought it was racist towards white people. They thought it was unsuitable for family audience and a number of other things I can't be bothered to go into. We just had Jordan Banjo on House of Games. He was such an absolute delight. Oh, was he? Oh, my God, he was lovely. Anyway, listen, I digress because we're talking about complaining about things. Celeb Big Brother are the next two. They're at three and two. 2018, when Roxanne Pallett claimed that Ryan Thomas had sort of punched her, but it was like some play fight thing. That became a huge thing because people said that, yeah.

4:462007 Celebrity Big Brother is at number two for the Shil Pachetti race row which involved Danielle Lloyd, Jade Goody, I can't remember who else was involved in that and the most complained about one is GMB, Piers Morgan saying he didn't believe Meghan Markle felt suicidal or whatever that was. What do we learn from this list I wonder? Well one of the things which I've just said which is that people complained a lot during the pandemic they were stuck at home but also things happened And in 2020, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd, all the reporting around that meant people were much more sensitive in general.

5:18People have become much more sensitive to making complaints, perceived racism, things like that. Things like swearing have fallen way back. Yes, no one minds, do they? No one. I'm told Ofcom would say that they still mind the C word and the MF word, as it is called. Now, 90 % of complaints are about offence. They're not about bias. They're not about other regulatory things. Also, most complaints between neighbours are about offence, aren't they? I think... Oh, my gosh, I'm really sorry. Never underestimate the capacity of the great British public to be offended by things. It is obviously miles and miles easier than it was to complain in the past because of social media, because everything is digitised.

5:59It's very easy to email. But they did used to get big postcard campaigns, things like that. you'll be sure that even back in 2005 where that was an orchestrated campaign there are now a lot of orchestrated campaigns by people and it might be by newspapers but then right back when it was Saxgate the prank calls by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to Andrew Sachs only two people had heard that broadcast famously and in the end they ended up with more than 40 ,000 complaints because the Mail and the Express and various other people took it on board and ran a campaign a campaign against the BBC to some extent against Russell Brand whatever it was it was just sort of trouble making.

6:36It doesn't sound like the Daily Mail. It doesn't sound like it but nowadays because of social media it's so much easier to disseminate that feeling of having been offended because lots of people are sharing clips anyway. We should also say that the broadcasters share a huge amount of clips for marketing and I don't know whether or not GMB for instance shared the clip of Piers Morgan saying I don't believe that Meghan Markle was suicidal but you can well see they've certainly shared clips like that and used them as a marketing tool they think um interestingly with Love Island the way people complain about Love Island although they have a sort of vigily for how they're complaining what they're really trying to do is use it as a sort of proxy voting they're complaining about a type of behavior that never meets the threshold but they feel like maybe I can sort of get that contestant out this other way.

7:24But also, yeah, if you've tweeted about how annoyed you are at a contestant and that hasn't worked, you go, well, I'm going straight to Ofcom. This has become a regulatory issue. I think that was shady. I think he should have told her. Yeah. So, yeah, I am going to, hold on, I've written to my MP. They don't appear to be sitting for some reason. I don't know. Maybe there's an election on. Now I'm going to write to Ofcom. And in general, one of the things that people say is that people have become so much more kind of politically and emotionally literate. so there are many many more complaints about potential harm to mental health of contestants all those sorts of things which you never heard complaints about in the past at all because people didn't have the language for them in lots of ways and now that people can see that more and as i said people are much more literate and much more feel that they can see offense occurring there were a lot of complaints during the pandemic about the coverage of vaccines which is a sort of bit of a canary for the fact that people thought that there was a coalescing movement against a much more coherent anti-vax movement because people were complaining that the broadcasters weren't properly covering vaccinations and actually what Ofcom would always say is they want the audience to tell them what they think I mean that's what they're there for so there is no right not to be offended so lots of things just don't meet the threshold for complaints so and it doesn't matter if there've been 40 ,000 or four complaints.

8:41But one of the things that is interesting, lots of these complaints have had an effect on television. Reality TV has been hugely modified and changed by complaints. After show care has become far better post-transmission duty of care that that exists as a thing which it never used to. And you now see that broadcasters show they're working miles more in reality TV where they used to have the big fireworks because it was fun. or you'd see someone behaving badly. But then now people complain about that. And so you now see someone being brought into the diary room or whatever or the Bush Telegraph room or whatever.

9:20To be told off, to be talked to about their behaviour, they're shown apologising. It's much more contextualised. It's hugely affected the sort of grammar of the programmes because people know what to expect now. Ofcom did a duty of care participants review. They kind of tried to collate all of the best practice in the industry for dealing with all of these types of shows because obviously there are lots of very sad stories that have come out of reality TV and things have happened and it was generally realised that lots of things had to change but it was such a sort of wild west and a new form of television which you, I'm sure, know.

9:54Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating how complaints have really become sort of just a new wing of the culture war. Yeah. As you say, it used to be blasphemy or swearing in the 70s or too much sex and that would be the complaints and the BBC used to have their duty log, which was just a person on a phone. And the next morning, there would be a type out, a printout of all the calls that had come in that night from people. And it would be 90%. I can't believe Del Boy said plonker. And it would be 5%. Oh, I really, really enjoyed Antiques Roadshow. And every time there's a nice one, they'd send it on. But they were also duty bound.

10:28Every time there was a complaint, they would always send that on. And it was 30, 40 things a night on the duty log. and it would be the same people night after night after night and developing quite a nice relationship with the people who sat on that duty desk. And now, yeah, it's a sort of complaints industrial complex because it's very easy to complain in the same way that it's very easy to rig an online vote. I always remember the first time you think, okay, this internet is going to catch on was when Steps didn't win Best Newcomer at the Brits, but Ben and Sebastian did. I think because Ben and Sebastian had early adopter online fans and they were able to vote.

11:03I spoke to H from Steps about it when he came on the show. So I thought, I wonder if anyone's ever spoken to you about Ben and Sebastian. And we had a long chat about it. He said, I never heard of him. I said, I know. I was excited, though, when they won it. I'm sorry, H. He's done all right for himself since. But this idea now that if you're on any sort of Reddit forum or any sort of mailing list, that it's very, very easy to have a template and to complain via that template. And those numbers suddenly become meaningless. this and it's difficult because definitely things happen on tv which one should complain about but you get to the point where if every single time anything happens you're getting 30 000 complaints and they all come with the same form of words if you're ofcom if you're the bbc or itv or if you're a production company when do you stop paying attention because you can't every morning go oh we need to deal with every single one of these because you're aware that there's a campaign going on.

11:56I always remember when Pointless is very rarely gets in the top five most complained about things at the BBC as you might imagine. But there was like a repeat that didn't go out in order. I cannot remember why. It was some genuinely boring bit of thing, something about one of the contestants. I can't remember what it was. And it was a day when a jackpot was given away. And so they skipped over that day, went to the next day, and everyone was furious. Rightly, in my opinion. So they all complained. And I looked at the list, and it was in the top ten. We were number three. I think it was sort of 4 ,000 complaints.

12:26And number two was complaining that the BBC's news report was too biased towards Palestine, and that had 8 ,000. And number one was complaints that BBC's news report was too biased towards Israel, and that was 8 ,100. Yeah. And that was the top two. So there comes a point, it's quite hard amongst that noise to find the signal of complaints. Exactly. They have to not take the number into account. Because almost all of these top tens weren't upheld. No. The biggest ever fine issue to a broadcaster was for ITV, for the phone line scandal, the phone-in scandal. and I think that was 5.6 million pounds.

12:58Back in the day of phone lines, and I wasn't directly involved, but suddenly I was near it. That was a wild west and it was seen for television as a new source of revenue. Of course, the world of gambling is enormously well regulated. I think television, when they started doing those phone lines, they were going into gambling without quite realising they were going into gambling. And so they had the slight slapdash thing of television. Have we got to get the show on tomorrow? Let's make this the question. And it became apparent that actually, you know hundreds of thousands of people were phoning in they were phoning in with their money so they were essentially running a bookmaker and they weren't running a bookmakers in the way it should should have been run so there was a good six months of everyone messing that up i don't think with uh bad intent but it very soon became apparent that you think oh yeah i don't think this is a very good way of running a and it was tied in with people not actually winning the competitions and giving it to people in the studio or some relative it was it was as you say a complete wild work which radio has done forever and blue peter i think wanted to wanted to name their cat and they had already decided they wanted to call it socks and whatever one i can't remember what one they decided to call it socks anyway so they got in huge trouble for that yeah in blue peter's defense that was that again there was a targeted campaign there by ravers who wanted to call the cat cookie which at the time was slang for ecstasy i don't remember ecstasy being called cookie but i'm willing to accept it so they essentially wanted to have a drug reference in the blue peter cat and the Blue Peter people thought we're going to ignore this and we're going to call the cat Socks instead.

14:22In the end, they did bring in another cat and called it Cookie. And that was an ecstasy reference because the BBC was run entirely by absolute hardcore ravers. The keyboardist from Alternate used to be the exec producer. None of that is true, but that was such an outrage at the time. It seems more innocent times now. Yes. I actually have a resolved Ofcom complaint that someone well-known got me. It's in a frame in our house. Someone gave it to my husband once. But someone well-known has stolen it. So I wouldn't say it is. And it's someone complaining to the BBC that a dog on CBBC said, I'm a fucking dog.

15:01And the letter reply, it's really written in such a staid language, you know. Contrary to your suggestion that the dog said, I'm a fucking dog, he actually, the dog on CBBC said, I'm a talking dog. And the whole, but it's really, it's so dispassionately written that's fun yeah it's a real classic you know what I bet he was both yeah the dogs think I've spent enough time talking come on the only time I ever complained to a TV show we were making a show in the 90s and I was watching Family Fortunes and I love Family Fortunes I bowed to very few people in my love of Family Fortunes and the format of Family Fortunes and they had the question we asked 100 people to name a Spice Girl here are the top 5 answers and I was like no no no no no that's literally who are the Spice Girls?

15:47That's the whole point of Foundry Fortunes is name something that you'd find in the bathroom. And there's an infant number of answers and we choose the top ones. Spice Girls, I mean, that's just so... No, no, I'm with you. Who are the Spice Girls? There's no way I'd fight you on this. So we at work, in the early days of email, we sent off a complaint to Foundry Fortunes. We did not hear back. So some things have changed for the better. And the other thing they did, it was the same episode. That's why we complained because two things happened that we thought were outrageous. They said... Yeah, you're not an animal.

16:14They said, name a word for tired. Yeah, good. That's a perfectly good family fortunes question because we can all think of loads. And this person said knackered, right? And it went, you think, oh, that seems surprising. I would have thought that that would be in there. Then at the end, it came up and knackered wasn't there, but cream crackered was there. And we go, well, no way eight people saying cream crackered. Is this boring? No way eight people saying cream crackered and no one is saying knackered, right? What they've done is they said Olnacca's a bit rude. They've sanitised it. So we'll put Cream Crackard.

16:45But then they accepted the answer. So come on. No, not acceptable. So Spice Girls and Cream Crackard, we complain to Family Fortunes. To this day, anyone who works at Family Fortunes, we have yet to have a reply. Please dig through those archives. Like all the politicians on the chat, on the talk shows at the moment. I'm so sorry you didn't get a reply. We'll be able to, after this, Olnacca, it's a bit late now. She's done a big question on LBC saying you never replied to her. It's interesting. The complaints thing is the same. of people saying, oh, my MP didn't get back to me. Anyone, if you look on Twitter, of anybody who ever, any politician who ever tweets or the Gary Linekers of this world, they will have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, immediately hundreds of replies, essentially abusing them.

17:24To the extent you think, well, you know they're no longer looking at their replies because as a human being, why would you? I mean, you'd be insane. After the first two years of everyone calling you a bellend, you kind of go, do you know what? I might just, I'll say the thing that I want to say about Rüdiger's tackle and then I'll move on with my day. And so when people say to, you know, Starmer or Sunak, oh, you didn't reply, you think, yeah, of course I didn't. I mean, it's the point where you just think, I've been abused for so long that eventually you ignore people and that's an issue for democracy, I think, the over-complaining.

17:57It is, I agree, the over-complaining. In general, I have to say that politicians get a lot of criticism. A huge amount of time is spent responding to these letters and going in at quite a high level, like, you know, if you talk to people at the BBC, their relations with people, with MPs who are asking them things in order that they can get back to their constituents, you know, these letters are actually taken very, very seriously in general. I think it's quite difficult with the case of sort of party leaders where obviously they get so many, but actually your average MP is taking those things very seriously, much more seriously than you might anticipate.

18:29The BBC, by its charter, is duty-bound to reply to every single complaint, however ridiculous or however important. They have to give them equal weight. So they literally have to reply to every single complaint they ever get. It's a massive job. I mean, Ofcom, the job of even regulating was used to, at least now it's all digitized and they can find keywords and things like that. But it used to just be banks of VHSs trying to record all the different terrestrial and other offerings. And then particularly with the public service broadcasters, which they're regulating. and then honestly just having to manually rewind, try and find where in this morning.

19:05It's a bit like a curse you can put on someone to say, yeah, it was on this morning, but I'm not going to tell you when. So you've got to watch the whole of this thing and try and find out when this little thing occurred in order that you can then make a judgment on whether or not the complaint should be out of help. So what do we conclude from this? It's interesting that the world of complaints has completely changed, that there are now these campaigns where it becomes difficult to work out if people are really complaining or if they're jumping on one side or other of the culture wars. Or wanting just to feel part of something.

19:35Wanting to feel part of it. But complaints are incredibly important. And as you've hinted, it's the way we change media and it's the way we start saying certain things have gone beyond their sell-by date and certain things need to change. Television needs to take a different attitude. As you say, reality TV is a perfect example. So they're incredibly important. But the role of the people who are having to police them is so hard because they're endlessly battling off millions and millions of sort of targeted campaigns that are spurious. Which existed in the past. There were orchestrated campaigns and, you know, the Christian right organised very well and there were certain groups that always did.

20:08But despite all of that, they still really want to hear from people because it's such an interesting view into changing currents in a fence. And they want to hear what people think about the television that is shown to them. I say one fascinating thing, when you look at the overnights and every morning our friends at the overnights send us the overnights. Which we're so grateful for. Thank you very much. Every single time someone says, right, we're having a boycott of this program because of something that happened in the program. We're going to boycott it. Everyone I know is not going to watch it.

20:35I have never in my entire career in television seen a single occasion where that's had any effect whatsoever. If anything, a boost. It goes up a little bit. And people are still saying, oh, people are still watching that. No one is watching Eurovision. Well, newsflash, a lot of people watch Eurovision. Yeah, exactly. So sometimes when complaints and stuff like that come about, you think usually the ratings tell you what people think of a television program. Usually. And that by and large remains unchanged unless something very bad happens. Which is the case with so much of social media where you think, okay, Twitter is not real life or Facebook is not.

21:12Or maybe some people think Facebook is slightly more real life than Twitter is in terms of what it indicates. but those are the places where that have become the big engines of complaint organising so it's doubly difficult to have to strip away what really matters but in the end you've got to adjudicate on something and there isn't a right not to be offended and you've sort of got to adjudicate on whether they balanced it right also the trouble is that people often on social media only see a tiny clip normally chopped to make it out of context and actually if you think over the whole 10 minutes of this segment or whatever it was or 4 minutes or whatever This was far more contextualised and the broadcaster took care of it.

21:49By the way, where do you complain about podcasts? I don't think they're regulated, are they? We can do what we want. This is a complete wild west as we've just evidenced. God, I might say something controversial. Yes. People who say Jaffa Cakes are cakes are psychopaths. Okay. There you go. I want to say don't write in, but of course we always wish to hear. Shall we do an advert? Yes, let's go to an advert. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. and so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks.

22:23And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EPCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EPCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

22:51Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs.

23:30Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

23:35This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. jack daniels and music are made for each other they share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights from backyard jams to sold-out arenas there's a song in every toast please drink responsibly responsibility.org jack daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks tennessee whiskey 40 alcohol by volume jack daniel distillery lynchburg tennessee

24:05welcome back everybody now marina you went to see taylor swift so firstly dish and secondly we're going to talk a little bit about what on earth is going on it's like you can't move and now we're talking about her as well i mean it's it's it's taylor's world and we're just living in it it is extraordinarily true i saw her on saturday with my daughter who is nine but it was really interesting I spoke to someone who went actually and was in Taylor's box the night before this is a friend of mine called Graham he's much older and his daughter is a friend of Taylor's and he said what? yeah and that's why he was in Taylor's box and he said I've covered everyone for 50 years writing about music this is like nothing else I've seen because every single word is sung back to her by every single person and which is true everyone in the stadium sings every word and people really mind about the words of the songs I think I read, maybe Julie Birch wrote this recently, saying that she's best understood Taylor Swift as a writer.