ITV has been fined a record £5.68m by Ofcom for abusing premium rate phone services in viewer competitions.
The media regulator said the fine was by far the highest ever imposed and reflected the seriousness of ITV's failures and their repeated nature.
TV shows Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Gameshow Marathon and Soapstar Superstar were all found to have "serious editorial issues".
Last year a report found viewers had spent millions on unfair competitions.
"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," Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards said.
The media regulator also said programme-makers showed "total disregard" for their own terms, conditions and broadcasting codes.
Three competitions on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway were found to be in breach of the regulators' codes, including Jiggy Bank.
Entrants were selected purely based on where they lived, so many people ringing in wasted their money.
On Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon, winners were selected based on how entertaining and lively they sounded, and on Soapstar Superstar producers overrode the viewers' vote, so the wrong participants were put forward for eviction.
"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," executive chairman of ITV Michael Grade, said.
ITV made £7.8m from uncounted votes from the programmes in question and some 10 million telephone calls were affected.
The broadcaster pledged to give back the sum to charity and for viewer compensation, and this fact was taken into account by Ofcom in reaching its decision on the level of the fines.
The penalty is almost three times higher than the previous record of £2 million that was imposed on GMTV by Ofcom in September 2007.
But as ITV could have been fined up to £70m - 5% of its commercial revenue - analysts have described the size of the fine as very small.
"For a company that's delivering to its shareholders £150m - £200m a year of free cash flow, i.e profit, money, this is on the pathetic end of not very much," broadcasting analyst Steve Hewlett told the BBC News channel.
As well as the fine, ITV will have to broadcast a summary of Ofcom's findings on six separate occasions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7373131.stm
Info from BBC News online