Game over for Alpha TV find-a-job contest
Greece’s broadcasting watchdog yesterday pulled the plug on a controversial television game show featuring unemployed people competing for a job. The National Broadcasting Council (ESR) ruled that private Alpha TV’s «Here’s Your Chance» show treated contestants in a demeaning way while offering covert advertising for the firms providing jobs for the show. The program has been denounced by Greece’s umbrella labor union, the General Confederation of Greek Labor (GSEE) as «a form of televised cannibalism.» Ordering Alpha to stop «Here’s Your Chance,» ESR said that the show «constitutes an insult to contestants’ human dignity by asking them questions concerning their personal and family affairs which have nothing to do with work.» In the show, TV viewers phone in – on high-charge lines – to vote for which of the two candidates will get the job.
