Thursday, January 9/2014

The government owns two tv stations, CYBC 1 and 2. They're supposed to be privatised although it's not clear that they'd be a desirable buy. Their chief attraction for us used to be evening movies, especially on the weekends, subtitled in Greek but almost always in English. We'd be grateful that they were subtitled rather than dubbed, but they had an astonishing number of grade B films - or worse - and often repeated the same film a few days later. They also had a ten minute evening news broadcast in English. Actually they still have it, but it's almost too annoying to watch. The presenters are no longer shown, though still recognisable by voice, and what is seen is a series of news clips, some local and some international. It's a poor source of international news and an annoying source for Cypriot politics. Anything concerning relations with the Turkish speaking north of the island is full of clumsy references to their "so-called" president, government, etc., with analysis in the same vein. And now there is a sort of background music, more repetitive single note sound, throughout the whole broadcast. The only purpose that springs to mind would be to drive viewers away so that the station could reasonably claim that they needn't provide an English news as there are no longer any watchers.