THE number of people entering a controversial TV3 quiz show had dwindled so much that the station was forced to call back entrants who had entered the competition online.

Play TV, which has now been scrapped by the station, had 26 complaints against it upheld by the Broadcasting Authority, and its predecessor the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.

A decision was made in recent weeks to jettison the show and Play TV vanished from the scheduling. TV3 then made an official announcement that the service was being dropped following enquiries by the Sunday Tribune.

One viewer, who had a number of complaints against the service upheld, said he had monitored the service in its final weeks and the number of calls being received, as posted on the show's website, was in terminal decline.

"The call levels had dropped from around 200 per minute to around 50 to 60 per minute for the first hour in recent times," he said.

"After the first hour, call levels were persistently below 10 per minute with periods where there were no calls per minute being recorded.

"They had got to the stage where they had no callers at the end of the show so they had to call back people who had entered via the website."

In its early days, TV3 had been getting up to 200 calls per minute, which at €1.50 for each call, was offering potential revenue of up to €18,000 per hour.

"The service was very popular with viewers but recently viewership to the service has declined," said a TV3 statement.

The Broadcasting Authority found that the operation of Play TV had been "misleading and unfair".