CAIRO (AP) The production company of Egypt's widely popular satire show said Sunday it has decided to leave the private station that took it off the air after it lampooned the military and the recent nationalist fervor gripping the country.
QSoft said in a statement that it failed to convince CBC to resume broadcasting Bassem Youssef's program, and will take legal action against the network over "financial and moral damages."
The dispute over Youssef's "ElBernameg", or The Program, in Arabic, started earlier this month when CBC took the show off the air after the new season's first episode, saying he violated "the journalist code of ethics" and had delivered fewer episodes than agreed upon.
Qsoft called CBC's reasons a "pretext" and said its decision reflected badly on freedom of expression in Egypt. It accused the station of waging a campaign against the satirist and the production company "to pressure them and impose restrictions on the program and its content."
The decision came minutes before airing the second episode of the season. It caused an uproar among Youssef's fans and some of the country's prominent politicians who accused the station of stifling criticism of the country's new interim rulers and the military.