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Breakfast broadcaster GMTV has been fined a record £2 million for "misconduct" in regard to its phone-in competitions.

The fine is the largest financial penalty ever to be imposed by the UK's media regulator, Ofcom.

It comes after Opera Telecom, the company that ran the competitions for GMTV, was fined £250,000 pounds by industry regulator Icstis for its role in the phone-in scandal.

In a ruling published today Ofcom said that a "widespread and systematic deception of millions of viewers" had occurred over a period of nearly four years, with GMTV's audience members paying to enter competitions that they had no chance of winning due to the way that they were run.

The breakfast show was accused of "gross negligence" in regard to the scandal, which first came to light following an investigation by the BBC's Panorama programme. An episode of the show broadcast on April 23rd claimed that staff employed by Opera were deliberately selecting competition finalists before phone entry lines closed.

Ofcom said that it had uncovered evidence of four types of misconduct in regard to the operation of GMTV competitions between August 2003 and February 2007, including the selection of winners before deadlines for phone line entries.

"Over a period of nearly four years, GMTV made profits running into millions of pounds from its competitions, but had no adequate oversight of this operation," said Ofcom announcing its decision.

"GMTV's disregard for the need to operate any reasonable compliance procedure, verification, oversight or management of the arrangements for the conduct of these competitions over such a long period of time could not, in the committee's view, be described as anything other than gross negligence," the regulator added.

Ofcom also stressed that the fine imposed on GMTV would have been higher had the broadcaster not put in place "an extensive programme of reparations and remedies" in the aftermath of the scandal.

In the wake of the phone-in debacle GMTV's then managing director Paul Corley resigned from his post along with the show's head of competitions.

GMTV also offered refunds on a potential 25 million competition entries and took out advertisements in national and regional newspapers to make viewers aware of the pledge.

Ofcom, which said it considered the £2 million fine imposed on GMTV to be a "proportionate and appropriate penalty", has also ordered the programme to broadcast a statement of its findings on three specified occasions.

GMTV could not immediately be reached for a response to the Ofcom ruling.