DavidJackson.info

Today’s row is over the high pitched whistling emitted by Basque and Catalans which drowned out the national hymn played before yesterday’s football match between Athletic and Barça. Fans screamed nationalist abuse, let off air horns and generally drowned out the national anthem and the King (who also attended).

However, the sports director of RTVE, the national broadcaster, ordered that the live transmission of the match be cut off due to the protest and switched to the Bilbao studio, until the anthem ended and the fans settled back down.

This has lead to a surge of complaints from members of the public, who say either that the anthem should have been transmitted in full (despite the background noise) or that RTVE have censured a nationalist protest in the best Franco style. In all, an almighty row.

This has lead to the head of the sports director of RTVE, Julián Reyes, who has just been fired by Javier Pons, the head of RTVE.

It has also lead to me getting a very short haircut, as Damien from Turre was so incensed by this that he clipped a tad too short.

It also lead to a nasty riot in Barcelona which ended up with around 50 people in jail.

RTVE, the Spanish state TV & radio broadcaster, has launched a beta version of its new “on demand” service. Currently, it´s limited to watching in house programs online for a week after they´ve been broadcasted, but they promise to extend it over the coming weeks.

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/index.html

RTVE – Radio Television Espanola, or the Spanish State TV & Radio network, has changed it’s corporate image for the first time since the mid 80′s.

The cost of this rebranding has not been disclosed. It comes along with an announcement from Javier Pons, the director general, that TVE will start to concentrate more on fiction and news.