Dancing with the dollars?

Questions were asked this morning on Melbourne radio about the fund-raising arrangements between Seven’s Dancing with the Stars and charity groups.

Seven has not disclosed what proportion of each 55c phone call goes toward the charity groups represented by dancing celebrities -and therein lies the rub.

It has claimed such information is commercial in confidence.

Questions are now being asked about how much is being forwarded by the country’s most popular programme to charities.

Neil Mitchell on Radio 3AW today said Seven had asked one charity not disclose the amount it had received from the show. Mitchell called on Seven to come clean on where the money goes, asking how much from each call goes to Seven or the phone company. He speculated that the figure could be as low as 10%

Many TV programmes such as Australian Idol and Big Brother utilise phone voting but don’t promise to forward any of it to charities (heck, they just keep the lot!). But Dancing is effectively trading off the goodwill of the groups as part of its production.

Several calls on 3AW claimed they knew of charities which had received amounts between $6,500 and $15,000 from proceeds, with one representative from the Smith Family saying, “I don’t know if thats a lot or a little. From our point of view you don’t have to do much (to get it).”

Given the show has up to 2million viewers for about twelve weeks it may also suggest the proportion of viewers who actually vote is small.

There were also claims that the celebrities were not given any figures on their own phone poll votes.

On the programme’s website Seven states:

15. The Seven Network will donate a percentage (%) of their share of revenue received from votes registered for each Celebrity, to the charity of each Celebrity’s choice.

Mitchell is also a regular contributor on Sunrise.