The Big Read TV format that is supposed to define Bulgarians' favourite books has officially been given a green light on Bulgarian National Television on October 5 2008.

For more than an hour politicians, athletes, journalists and other public figures talked about their favourite book and the state of Bulgarian prose and readers. Most of them pointed The Master and Margarita by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov as their favourite novel.

The programme featured interviews of teenagers who gave their preferences to foreign-language books such as The Lord of The Rings, which was named as the UK's best-loved book by the BBC, who owns the rights of the TV format.

The rules say that everybody can nominate a book in the voting that has already started on 4etene.bnt.bg website, specially set up for the purpose. People can vote online, via sms, telephone calls and by sending letters.

The way the website has been named provoked the first debate on the format mainly in Bulgarian online forums. The issue was raised because of the use of the digit "4" in the web address which is commonly used by Bulgarians in sms writing and chat programmes as a replacement of the letter "ch". The Bulgarian word for "reading" is "chetene", hence the web address "4etene".

Critics claim that this way of corrupting Bulgarian language did not correspond with the noble goals of the TV format that is suppose to encourage Bulgarians to read more.

The top 100 book titles will be announced on December 12 2008 and the winner will be announced on March 15 2009.