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 Entertainment | June 2006 
Fearing Violation, Sky Pulled Fox News and BBC
 Wire services - El Universal
Media outlets are currently prohibited from releasing poll results.
Sky Mexico blocked four news channels over the weekend because of fears they might violate local electoral laws, the satellite provider´s head of programing said Monday.
All four networks went dark on Sky after midnight on Friday but were being transmitted normally early Monday. Sky programming director Javier Anaya said they had assured that upcoming programs would follow all appropriate guidelines.
Electoral law prohibits the media from releasing public opinion poll results starting eight days before the July 2 presidential election, an effort to keep voters from being unfairly influenced.
Anaya told The Associated Press that officials with Fox in Mexico asked that the Fox News broadcast be temporarily blocked while the network guaranteed that its coverage of the presidential elections would not violate the ban on opinion polls.
Anaya added that Sky also decided to interrupt the transmission of BBC World, Bloomberg, and AUTI news channels as a precaution after failing to reach representatives from those networks on Friday.
He said that Sky chose "to take the other three channels off the air to prevent something from happening over the weekend, when we couldn´t get reach them."
In London, Jeff Hazell, head of sales and distribution for the BBC, said "we are not pleased that the channel wasn´t available to our viewers in Mexico over the weekend."
"However we appreciate the concerns Sky had and their reasons why they decided to do what they did," Hazell said in a statement. "It was clearly not a deliberate action against BBC World ... We´re grateful that this has now been resolved and we´re back on air."
Bloomberg spokeswoman Judith Czelusniak said the network was aware of the broadcast interruption.
Anaya said CNN and other news networks offered by Sky were never interrupted because they told the satellite provider their programming wouldn´t include opinion polls.
He added that Sky Mexico monitors the programing on all of its channels closely, but had no plans to interrupt any future transmissions unless one of its networks asked to be taken off the service.
Those turning to Fox News this weekend found a message stating: "In accordance with Mexican electoral law, we are obliged to temporarily interrupt the transmission of this channel."
None of the networks were interrupted on the Cablevision cable network. |
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