Sigfrid Gras, director of TV3, on the censorship of a mention of RAC1: "It was our mistake"

BarcelonaSigfrid Gras, director of TV3, admitted in the CCMA control commission that took place this Friday that the removal of a mention of RAC1 in the broadcast of the play Dones de ràdio was an internal error. "It was our mistake," he said. However, he remarked that the management of 3Cat had no knowledge of the alteration of the work and that at no time did they give any instruction regarding it. On September 17th Jordi Basté denounced during the Davantal of El món a RAC1 that during the broadcast of Dones de ràdio on TV3, a mention of RAC1 made by the character played by Àngels Gonyalons had been removed. Specifically, in one scene, Gonyalons' character says: "I host a radio program on one of the country's main stations. It's RAC1, I don't know why I hide it. It's an evening magazine show, where I can do my own thing quite a bit… and have a large audience. I mean that on the radio, I am also the queen." But the phrase "It's RAC1, I don't know why I hide it" was not heard in the recording that TV3 broadcast.

Following Basté's complaint, the management of 3Cat assured that it was launching an internal investigation to clarify the facts. This Friday, Gras explained that the decision to remove the mention originated from the fiction department, which, after a first viewing of the content for validation, detected that RAC1 was mentioned just after the appearance of the "3Cat presents" sign and alerted the external production company that had made the recording. "The department asked the production company if there was any way to avoid this explicit mention at the beginning of the recording because the character in the play already allowed it to be understood in other moments that it was about the leading radio station in Catalonia," Gras explained. According to Gras, the production company made a modification proposal, which was validated by the fiction department team.

"The mention was removed to avoid proximity to the [3Cat] brand, it is the only modification, because the subsequent references to RAC1 and its professionals were maintained," he remarked. The director of 3Cat assured that the modification was made "without the intention of censoring the original work," but acknowledged that no consultation was made either with the author, Cristina Clemente, or the director, Sergi Belbel.

Regarding remedial actions, 3Cat has removed the truncated version of the work from the platform and uploaded the original version, including the mention of RAC1. Furthermore, Gras asserts that apologies have been offered to the management of the Grupo Godó station. The 3Cat management states that following this incident, validation and coordination circuits have been reviewed and workflows have been reorganized.