Cairo : Al Sahafa.
    CBC’S decision concerning suspending the second episode of the third season of the satirical TV show “Al Bernameg” caused huge debate all over the mass medias and on Faceboock. People who are pro-suspension think that the show is not appropriate for the current situation of Egypt, as the country now is in the middle of serious challenges concerning both local and international affairs that terrorism is the most important of them. Terrorism is deeply rooted and many victims ; of innocent citizens, soldiers and officers, were killed.
    They also think that this show played a role in classifying the political activists or the supporters of the 30 June revolution. But the people who are anti-suspension of the broadcasting of the show think that preventing it means violating liberties which distorts the image of Egypt at this specific time.
    CBC has released a statement on Friday few minutes before the usual time of the show. The statement was read by the broad caster of (Momken) show, Khayrie Ramdan, the statement was as follows:
    “confirming on the Broad of directors’ statement last Saturday concerning the previous episode of El Bernameg Program, which was broadcasted last Friday, when we were surprised by the content of the episode, that was delivered on 1st November 2013, for its violation for what was stated in the statement , which means that both the producer of the program and its anchor still insist on Violating CBC’s policies mentioned in their contract . Although we did ask the producer and the anchor to consider and commit to the statement, besides the producer and the anchor did not deliver the number of episodes agreed to be delivered during the first year in spite of their receiving their full financial rights, they insisted on having extra fees as a condition for producing new episodes , which represent violation of the contract terms signed by all parties. So, the broad directors of CBC channels decided to suspend the program till the technical and financial problems are resolved”.
    At the same time, the Egyptian presidency has released a statement explaining that it has no relation with the program suspension, and the matter is a mere problem between the channel and the producing company. This statement was read by the media advisor of the president Ahmed Al Mislemany who said that : “the presidency respects the freedoms of opinion and expression, and suspending any program is considered an internal problem of the channel”.
    On Friday, Bassem Youssif left Cairo air port on his way to Abu Dhabi. It was reported that the aim of this visit was to meet the administration members of MBC channels to negotiate about transferring the  program From CBC to MBC channels. It was also reported that Bassem Youssif took this step after he was informed that CBC is very serious about suspending the program.
    Bassem commented on their decision and published his comment on his Twitter page saying that : “the episode will be broadcasted on YouTube soon, don’t worry”. But Mohammad Al Ameen, the owner of CBC channels, threatened to sue Bassem Yousif if he broadcasted the episode on YouTube as it is considered a violating of the contract terms.
    Some media sources have confirmed that the presidency and the army has no relation with suspending the episode, as it didn’t deal with any of them, but the main reason behind the suspension was Bassem’s fierce attack on CBC administration discussing openly their duplicity of standards.
    The journalist Mohammad Abdel-Rahman, who attended the broadcasting of the suspended episode : at Radio theater in Cairo on 1st  Wednesday, has submitted his testimony that was published in the Lebanese journal “Al-AKhbar” on Saturday. He said that Bassem responded to the CBC’s first statement that was stated few minutes after the broad casting of the first episode. Bassem was accused of using connotative sexual terms, but he confirmed that the program is for adults from the beginning and the channel accepted to broadcast the TV serial “the story of Hayat”, during the last Ramadan, which was full of such connotations and the channel didn’t take any actions against this respect, and didn’t suspend any episode.
    Bassem also said that the channel prevented broadcasting the Turkish TV serials because of the Turkish hostile situation towards Egypt after 3 June, but after a while the channel changed its attitude although the Turkish situation still the same . Bassem wonders about “the national abstracts” that he is accused of violating them while the channel didn’t boycott the Turkish drama for long.
    Abdel-Rahman also added that Bassem concentrated on the absent professionalism of the Egyptian and Arab media, he displayed some of illogical statements repeated by some journalists like Mostafa Bakry, Ahmed Mussa, and Muhammad Al-Ghety about the president’s obsession with food . Bassem wonders about the credibility of such news and in what way the are important to public.
    The second link of the episode is devoted to celebrating , of course in Bassem’s special way, the 17th anniversary of Al-Jazeera channel. The team showed the intentioned mistakes, and errors made by the channel parallel with a criticism on other Egyptian channels that have professional defects.
    Bassem Youssif made many jokes about Al Jazera because of the nature of their statements specially Mohammad Al Jouwady the specialist of Egypt Modern History.
In the third link of the episode, Bassem stated seriously that he is ready to suspend his program if he was informed that its episodes threaten the national security of Egypt , but he doesn’t believe that Egypt might be that weak to be threatened by a satiric program. He also confirmed that the program doesn’t aim at attacking someone for the favor of someone else for revenging for someone from someone else, but it aims at presenting a point of view and commenting on what happens in Egypt in a satiric way.
A source has revealed that the main problem between Bassem Youssif and CBC channel is a financial one, as the channel has breached the contract terms considering the time of advertisement, which was supposed to be 15 minutes only, but this period was increased to reach about 60 minutes in some episodes ignoring the team work’s percent of the profit.
But the producing company refused to take any action and released a statement the next day saying that : “the company is sorry for CBC’s sudden decision of suspending the program without informing the team work about any intention to suspend it till revealing their decision, the company confirms its commitment to deliver all the episodes on time without violating the contract terms with this respect , besides the commitment not to permit any details about the relationship between the channel and the producing company , so we are obligated not to permit any details about this respect for our professional credibility. The program administration will never reveal any statements or reactions that may affect the company financial and professional rank. We consider the bad effect of CBC’S statement on the reputation of the company.”
The statement confirms that the company will deal with this situation professionally away from agitation.