THE BROADCASTING Authority yesterday said there was enough evidence to build a case against one of the two Limassol TV channels accused by former DISY deputy Andreas Themistocleous of seeking up to €5,000 to promote his candidacy ahead of parliamentary elections.
Head of the Broadcasting Authority Andreas Petrides told state radio yesterday that at first glance, the authority had enough evidence to establish that one of the channels had in fact violated the law on broadcasting.
Before the elections, Themistocleous, who was running for re-election, claimed he had been approached by Limassol TV channels Capital and NTV, saying both had proposed package deals offering a combination of advertising spots and appearances on their political shows in exchange for payment, reaching up to €5,000.
To back his claim, the former Limassol deputy disclosed alleged documents showing NTV’s offer of €3,000 in exchange for airtime on election shows. He produced a copy of a fax sent to him, dated March 21, 2011, from NTV’s department of marketing and advertising, which contained the station’s offer of a “package for television publicity”.
The €3,000 offer consisted of the following: a 10-minute long televised interview with the candidate to publicise “your daily life, your hobbies, your vision etc.”; two repeats of the same interview; an appearance on a political panel show; coverage of two events attended by the candidate; an appearance on the station’s main news bulletin; and 30 “free” advertising spots to be aired during primetime.
There was an alternative “special offer” worth €2,000 and consisting of 30 spots as paid political advertisements, with 10 more ad spots thrown in free of charge.
Though he had nothing in writing from Capital, Themistocleous repeated his allegation that he was contacted by a journalist of that station who was “acting on behalf of the owner” and who analysed their offer, which was €7,000.
“But the job could be done with €5,000 as well,” Themistocleous noted at the time, suggesting that the price for publicity was negotiable.
Both channels denied the claims. Following formal complaints submitted to the broadcasting authority by Themistocleous, an inquiry was launched.
Petrides said the authority investigated the case against Capital in depth but could not build a case. He noted that Capital had agreed to hand over telecommunications data including for land lines and mobiles of people implicated, after Themistocleous claimed he had received phone calls from journalists belonging to the station at specific dates.
“After analysis, we concluded that no calls were made during those dates to the office or mobile of Mr Themistocleous,” said Petrides.
“Regarding NTV, allow me to be a little sparse in my comments. The board of the broadcasting authority decided there was evidence at first glance to construct a case against the organisation for possible violations of the law,” he added.
Themistocleous remained critical of the board yesterday, suggesting they secure a court order to access data on all incoming calls to his mobile.
He further argued the authority was obliged to send circulars on election regulations to the TV stations four months before the elections, but only sent them in early April.
He repeated the demand for TV stations to submit full lists of programming with a breakdown of the airtime allotted to parliamentary candidates.
“You can’t have a candidate speaking about himself for 25 minutes on his own and believe this didn’t happen without payment,” he said.
Capital’s owner Achilleas Demetriou said the board’s decision exonerates the station fully. “Nobody from Capital called Mr Themistocleous to ask him anything. We proved this through research, submitting CyTA’s official data on all our calls from land lines and mobiles,” he said.
