The two smaller political parties have threatened to take legal action against the Broadcasting Authority for changing its schedule of political broadcasts.

Alternattiva Demokratika and Azzjoni Nazzjonali issued separate statements yesterday protesting that this move placed the two bigger parties at an advantage.

AD applied for an injunction against the authority on Friday night, complaining that the change in schedule prevented the party from making its voice heard in the last week before the March 8 election.

AD was scheduled to air a broadcast on TVM on March 4, but this was pushed forward. It condemned this move because the series of political broadcasts had already started running, after consultation with all the political parties.

AD's application was accepted by duty magistrate Giannino Caruana Demajo who scheduled a hearing for tomorrow.

AN leader Josie Muscat also wrote to the authority informing it that his party was seeking legal advice and planned to present its case in court on Monday. When contacted by The Sunday Times, authority chairman Joseph Scicluna insisted that neither AD nor AN had lost a minute of their slot; the only thing the authority had done was reschedule particular spots.

He explained that when the authority first drew up its schedule it would be in the dark as to what other stations and programmes on the national station would be airing.

When the authority realised that a particular political party or person will be appearing on different programmes on the same night, sometimes right through from 8.30 to 11.30 p.m., it shifted the political broadcasts around.

"It's true, that both AN and AD will not appear in the last week of the campaign, but we have the viewers' interests at heart and we cannot afford a situation where this happens, so we just shifted the slots around - it's all part of the jigsaw puzzle," Mr Scicluna said.

He added that the authority had issued a reply to AD's application, explaining that it had the right to change the schedule according to necessity.

"We didn't spring any surprises on them."