ITV has been slapped with a record £5.68 million fine for repeatedly abusing viewers with premium rate phone-lines.
The broadcast watchdog Ofcom said that the TV station shown "total disregard" for its own codes in allowing viewers to waste millions on unfair competitions.
Shows including Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway were all said to have "serious editorial issues", the watchdog said.
Ofcom chief Ed Richards said: "This was a thorough set of investigations which uncovered institutionalised failure within ITV that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct on mass audience programmes."
Three competitions on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway were said to have been unfair for viewers.
In one such competition winners were selected purely on where they lived, so thousands of people who entered the competition in good faith were unable to win.
ITV made £7.8 million from uncounted votes in the programmes in question and some 10 million telephone calls were affected.
Executive chairman of ITV Michael Grade, said: "Ofcom's announcement today is an appropriate moment to restate ITV's unreserved apology to the public for breaches that took place between 2003 and January 2007."
The fine is the largest that any broadcaster has been fined by Ofcom so far. The previous record was a £2 million fine imposed on GMTV in September 2007.
ITV has vowed to plough the £7.8 million sum back into charity, and Ofcom took that into account when deciding the level of its fine.
Analysts believe ITV could have been fined as much as £70 million – five per cent of its annual revenue.
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