GROPPERA RADIO AG AND OTHERS v. SWITZERLAND JUDGMENT 16 village of Maur. Furthermore, challenging the Federal Council’s 1983 Ordinance would be tantamount to applying for a review of legislation in the abstract, which was in principle outside the jurisdiction of the Convention institutions. Nor could Mr Marquard, Mr Fröhlich and Mr Caluzzi claim to be victims on the ground that they were listeners living in the area covered by the co-operative, since they were not subscribers to its cable network. 47. By "victim" Article 25 (art. 25) means the person directly affected by the act or omission which is in issue, a violation being conceivable even in the absence of any detriment; the latter is relevant only to the application of Article 50 (art. 50) (see, in particular, the Johnston and Others judgment of 18 December 1986, Series A no. 112, p. 21, § 42). 48. Like the Commission in its decision of 1 March 1988 on the admissibility of the application, and for similar reasons, the Court does not consider it necessary to examine whether the applicants can claim to have been victims during the period from 1 January 1984 (entry into force of the Federal Council’s Ordinance of 17 August 1983) to 21 March 1984 (date of the order from the Zürich area telecommunications office of the PTT to the co-operative) or during the period following 30 August 1984, when the Pizzo Groppera station was damaged by lightning. From 21 March to 30 August 1984, on the other hand, the applicants were directly affected by the 1983 Ordinance and by the administrative decisions of 21 March and 31 July 1984. Admittedly, these were not formally directed at the applicants, who continued to broadcast over the air freely, but their effects were fully felt by them. Since the co-operative was prohibited from feeding Sound Radio’s programmes into its network, the applicants lost an appreciable proportion of their usual audience - the listeners living in areas where reception was poor or even impossible because of the mountainous nature of the country. 49. Nor, in relation to Article 25 (art. 25), is there any ground for distinguishing between the different applicants, despite obvious dissimilarities of status or rôle and the fact that Groppera Radio AG alone joined the co-operative’s appeal to the Federal Court. All had a direct interest in the continued transmission of Sound Radio’s programmes by cable: for the company and its sole shareholder and statutory representative, it was essential to keep the station’s audience and therefore to maintain its financing from advertising revenue; for the employees, it was a matter of their job security as journalists. 50. Lastly, the Court cannot attach any importance to the fact that Mr Marquard, Mr Fröhlich and Mr Caluzzi were not subscribers to the cooperative’s cable network. Before the Convention institutions they complained of interference with their freedom to impart information and ideas regardless of frontiers and not, other than in their observations of 29