Great Britons was a program of BBC in 2002 featuring public voting to determine who is considered to be the greatest persons of UK’s history. Seems it was so far ago, so that Great Britons page on BBC site is missing now. Anyway you can enjoy press release and Wikipedia article . This format was later used in a dozen of countries. For example this show was called The Greatest American in the US and conducted by the Discovery Channel.

The final show of Ukrainian version of Great Britons staged by Inter TV channel was broadcasted several days ago.

“UK has chosen Princes Diana “, “The US has chosen Elvis” - ads of Great Ukrainians claimed, nonetheless the winners were Churchill and Reagan respectively. But this wasn’t the greatest fault of the project.

Editor-in-Chief of Great Ukrainians project and one of most respected Ukrainian journalists Vakhtang Kipiani posted in his blog just before the final show (all links in Ukrainian):

“I don’t know who’s on the first place now. This information isn’t given to me starting from Tuesday”

Telekrytyka, leading media magazine, published a leak that Prince of medieval Kyivan Rus Yaroslav the Wise is put on the first place with 500 000 text messages sent by 80 mobile subscribers. At the same time Ukrainian bloggers were reporting that they can’t vote for Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian nationalist leader, who was leading according to recent public results.

So in the final show of Great Ukrainians broadcasted this weekend voting results were presented as:
1. Yaroslav the Wise - 648443 votes
2. Mykola Amosov (famous doctor and academic) - 322321 votes
3. Stepan Bandera - 261247 votes

Yesterday Kipiani blogged:

“60 thousand votes for Yaroslav the Wise during one month and some 550 thousand in just one day - is that possible? The letter” of the project was not violated, but “the spirit” was”.

So why somebody needed to falsify voting results of a TV show? And why TV channel hasn’t discarded this messages? Here’s the answer. Consolidated voting of Ukrainian nationalist and Western Ukraine put leader of Ukrainian mid-20th century independence movement on the first place.

But this result was unacceptable for Inter TV channel’s owners, with their strong ties with Party of Regions and Russia, considering Bandera’s movement to be Nazist (despite the fact that Stepan Bandera spent WW2 imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps).

So, what will be format owner’s move? Will BBC react?