NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said the cancellation of the country's most-watched news show by a unit of Promotora de Informaciones, Spain's largest media company, may hurt his re-election campaign.

Promotora's Portuguese unit, Grupo Media Capital SGPS SA, cancelled its evening news broadcast's Friday edition, which had a different format and presenter from the rest of the week. Socrates, who had said the Friday show was biased against him, denied he encouraged the move. Socrates is seeking re-election on September 27.

Socrates, a Socialist, said last night that his campaign may be hurt if voters think he was involved. "I don't want my party to be hurt by the decision of a company," he told television reporters.

The cancellation "comes at a particularly sensitive time," Nuno Cintra Torres, a Lisbon-based media analyst, said in an interview today. "It will probably be used in various ways until the elections."

TVI last night said in an e-mailed statement that it acted simply to "standardise and strengthen the consistency" of its evening news shows. It said it's committed to "freedom of expression and the right to information".

Promotora, known as Prisa, bought control of Media Capital in 2007, raising its stake to 94 percent. In June, after Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, in which the government holds rights over key decisions, held talks about buying a Media Capital stake, opposition parties said it could be a means for the government to muffle TVI's criticism.

Two days after Portugal Telecom's announcement, Socrates said he opposed the deal, saying he didn't want the government to be accused of influencing TVI's editorial line.

The Friday anchorwoman, Manuela Moura Guedes, is a former member of parliament for the People's Party, which describes itself as a right-wing party. Moura Guedes, who frequently injected personal commentary, helped the program win an average audience share of 34 percent in July, according to figures from Media Capital. It was interrupted in August for vacations.

"TVI uses the maxim bad news is good news to grab audiences," Cintra Torres said. "It's not that TVI has different stories than other media, it's the way they present it." The "aggressive" style, especially in the Friday show, has similarities to News Corp.'s Fox News in the US, he said.

"It's not a news show, it's a manhunt," Socrates told rival news station RTP1 in April, citing TVI's reporting on an investigation of his involvement in approving a shopping center near Lisbon in 2002. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The cancellation came weeks after Moura Guedes's husband, Jose Eduardo Moniz, quit as TVI's programming director to join Ongoing Strategy, a Portuguese investment company that held talks with Prisa about buying a Media Capital stake. Moura Guedes, 53, remains a journalist at TVI.