Fireman Sam Qur'an row gets alarm bells ringing at BBC

https://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2016/jul/27/fireman-sam-quran-row-bbc-complaints

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Spare a thought, if you would, for the good people of the BBC complaints department. The corporation has had more than 1,000 complaints about the episode of children’s favourite Fireman Sam, which appeared to show a character stepping on a page from the Qur’an.

Related: Channel 5 removes Fireman Sam episode showing character stepping on Qur'an

Only to be expected, you might think, after the production company apologised for the incident and cut all its ties with the animation studio, which it blamed for the mistake.

Except that it’s not a BBC show. Fireman Sam, as any preschooler will tell you, airs on Channel 5, a fact lost on a complaints website, which urged offended viewers to get in touch with the corporation.

The BBC has said it is more than happy to forward the complaints on to Channel 5 owner, Viacom, and the programme’s producer, HIT Entertainment – one instance in which the BBC’s in-house firefighters were not required.