GMTV director resigns over fake UK phone-in shows

LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) GMTV Managing Director Paul Corley has resigned from the television channel as a result of a string of phone-in competition scandals that have tarnished the reputations of a number of British broadcasters.

GMTV said today that Corley's resignation was part of a package of measures aimed at restoring viewer confidence in its daily prize competitions. Corley would leave once the measures were implemented, GMTV said.

''We would like to apologise unreservedly again for the occurrence of these errors. It is important that people take responsibility when mistakes are made that threaten the trust of our viewers,'' Corley said in a statement.

GMTV suspended all its competitions following the discovery in April of what it described as serious operational errors in the running of its competitions. It called in auditors Deloitte to probe the scale of the errors and identify viewers affected.

''It is now clear that a significant number of competition entries were excluded from consideration,'' said GMTV, adding that this mostly occurred June 2005 and March 2007 when competition lines closed at in the morning.

A further smaller number were excluded between January 2003 and May 2005 when lines generally closed at midnight.

GMTV said refunds would be offered to competition entrants who were wrongly excluded from competitions and 250,000 pounds (514,900 dollars) would be donated to the childrens' charity ChildLine.

Some 250 free prize draws would also be held for affected competition entrants at a total cost of 2.5 million pounds.

Walt Disney Co owns 25 per cent of GMTV with ITV, Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster, owning the remainder.

REUTERS SBC RN1451