Media Broadcasting Services (MBS), majority owned by Sweden's Modern Times Group, submitted again an application for a Bulgarian nationwide television licence to the Council on Electronic Media. MBS, which is represented by Kevork Kevorkyan, applied for the country's second private nationwide TV licence in October 2000, but lost out to local firm New Television, owned by Greece's Antenna TV. MBS then appealed the government decision, saying the procedure lacked transparency, and last July a high court retracted the New Television licence. Antenna has said it would bid again when a new procedure for granting a licence is launched, which is expected in the first half of 2002. Another contender that also failed to win a licence, Czech MEF Holding, which controls Czech private TV Nova channel, also submitted an application a week ago. Bulgaria's first licence for a private national TV channel was won in April 2000 by Balkan News Corporation, fully owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The new channel bTV started broadcasting two months later.