(dpa) -
Swedish commercial broadcaster TV4 has been dropped as international
distributor of the broadcasts from the Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, Nobel Foundation director Michael Sohlman said Monday.
Sohlman said TV4 had "violated" terms of the contract with Nobel
Foundation subsidiary Nobel Media that stated the December 10 award ceremony
was to be broadcast live.
However, broadcasts in China were not broadcast live and remarks by Nobel
Foundation chairman Marcus Storch were censored in 2007, according to the Nobel
Foundation.
Storch's remarks alluded to an exhibition on freedom of expression at the Nobel Peace Museum in Oslo, Norway.
TV4 was awarded the contract last year to produce and broadcast the award
ceremony in Stockholm, the Nobel banquet and the Nobel Prize Concert.
The choice of TV4 was seen as a setback for Swedish public broadcaster SVT that
had for years broadcast the ceremony from the Stockholm Concert Hall and
banquet held at Stockholm City Hall.
Sohlman said there were other television companies in Europe but declined to
say if talks had been initiated with other groups.
The Nobel Foundation manages the assets of Swedish industrialist and dynamite
inventor Alfred Nobel who endowed the prizes for literature, medicine, physics,
chemistry and peace.
The peace prize is awarded in Oslo, while the other prizes are awarded in Stockholm.
TV4 chief executive Jan Scherman said the cuts were "unacceptable,"
adding in a statement that we "should make demands on the Chinese
television companies to re-broadcast the programmes in full."
According to TV4, Chinese television companies China Central Television (CCTV)
and Shanghai Media Group (SMG) violated their contracts with TV4 but this was
not sufficient grounds for Nobel Media to cancel its contract with TV4.