The Broadcasting Authority has said that they offered the PN an on-screen crawl which would run through the episode of Hadd Ghalik in which they were meant to feature indicating when the episode was filmed, but said that this too was rejected by the PN.

Last Sunday's Hadd Ghalik episode was meant to feature parliamentarians competing against panto dames but was not broadcasted after the two PN MPs who took part in the filming of the episode - David Agius and Toni Bezzina - requested that the show not be aired.

The PN later clarified that they did not want to appear in the episode - which was filmed five weeks ago, before the onset of the current political crisis - due to the climate that the country currently finds itself in.

The Broadcasting Authority has now also sent in its own statement on the matter, saying that Agius had asked for the episode of the game show not to be aired due to the change in circumstances since it was recorded.

The authority said in a statement that it would like to make clear that the night before the programme should have been aired, they had given direction for a crawl to be included throughout the programme which would have indicated that the episode was filmed five weeks before.

This decision was communicated to Agius and to the Public Broadcasting Service, the statement read.

After this communication, the BA said, Agius once again sent back requesting that the parts in the programme where the PN MPs be edited.  This however could not be done by the authority as it does have the faculty to do so, the BA said before noting that their job is only to ensure that the law is followed.