Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, or CyBC , is Cyprus' public broadcasting service. It transmits island-wide on four radio and two domestic television channels, and uses one satellite channel for the Cypriot diaspora. It also transmits on a separate high definition channel.
CyBC is a public broadcaster, meaning it is non profit and thus has no shareholders.
CyBC was partially funded by a tax on electric bills, a practice which ended on 1 July 2000;[1] CyBC is currently funded by the state budget. The amount of the tax was dependent on the size of the home and, as a hypothecated tax for public television, was similar in principle to the television licence systems in other countries. The corporation is a member of the international broadcasting community, belonging to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Broadcasting Organisation of Non-Aligned Countries (BONAC) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA).
History and legal framework
CyBC began as the Cyprus Broadcasting Service, with its first radio broadcast at 17:00 on Sunday, 4 October 1953. Programmes were broadcast in Greek, Turkish and English on 434 and 495 metres medium wave (691 and 606 kilohertz). The station provided a free weekly broadcast known as Radio Cyprus.[2]