Media Perspective: Saying yes to dodgy incentives weakens agencies' position.

A small section of the Campaign office has become rather fond of a distasteful cartoon strip in the lads' mag Maxim called Dog Baby. The action involves a sad loser who creates a dog/baby hybrid because he has heard women are attracted to men with babies and/or dogs.

Armed with his new 'pet' as an inducement, our hero cleans up with the ladies, leaving Dog Baby to face painful death through his neglect.

Recent reports alleged the sales house ids, owned by Telewest and selling on behalf of the Flextech channels, had been wooing agencies with its own version of Dog Baby, in the form of extra commission on top of the usual 15 per cent.

While there has never been any suggestion that ids was doing anything illegal, Telewest still saw fit to instigate an internal investigation in December. Last week, Telewest's audit committee issued a statement in response to 'certain business practices' at ids announcing there was no evidence of 'material weakness or deficiency in internal controls'.

However, it did say there would be modifications to business practices and an improvement in ids' 'controls and procedures' to bring it into line with the rest of the group. So, a slight rap on the knuckles for ids and, presumably, an end to these 'certain business practices'.

But Telewest's actions will have little effect outside ids and little mud has stuck to ids' management. Agencies are relieved the investigation has been completed without any ...