The BBC has been fined a total of £400,000 by Ofcom for faking competition winners and misleading its audience during phone-ins on a number of programmes.

Ofcom said the BBC had breached its Broadcasting Code covering unfair conduct of viewer and listener competitions.

The fines from the communications regulator are the highest financial penalty it has imposed on the BBC.

Specifically, Ofcom found the BBC in breach of Rule 2.11 of the Code, which states that "competitions should be conducted fairly". Ofcom considered that these breaches of the Code were very serious.

In each of these cases the BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly.

The investigations found that, in some cases, the production team had made premeditated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning. In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems made up the names of winners.

The television programmes that breached the Code were: Comic Relief on BBC1 on 16 March 2007, which was fined £45,000; Sport Relief, also on BBC1 on 15 July 2006, which was also fined £45,000; Children in Need, BBC1 (Scotland) on 18 November 2005, fined £35,000 and TMi, BBC2 and CBBC on 16 September 2006, fined £50,000.

BBC radio programmes were also investigated by Ofcom about alleged breaches. The regulator found the Liz Kershaw Show, on BBC 6 Music on 1 May 2005 to 6 January 2006, in breach of the Code and fined a total of £115,000. The Jo Whiley Show, BBC Radio 1 on 20 April to 12 May 2006, was fined £75,000 for breaching the Code; Russell Brand, BBC 6 Music on 9 April 2006, and the Clare McDonnell Show, BBC 6 Music from September 2006, were both fined £17,500 each.

Although viewers and listeners paid the cost of their calls to take part in these competitions, Ofcom said that the BBC did not receive any money from the entries. However, the regulator said that the BBC failed to have adequate management oversight of its compliance and training procedures to ensure that the audience was not misled.