KUDOS

Kudos to CNMG/Channel 4 for giving all day coverage of the consultation on food prices. But why didn't the powers at be advertise that it was going to be live? Media Watch found it by accident while flicking through the channels.

CNC 3 carried a full story at noon on Day 1, complete with the Prime Minister and the Central Bank Governor. But poor TV6 seemed to be playing catch up with just a phone interview with Charlene Stuart, and some video from the sypmosium. Then about a minute into her interview, Fabian Pierre cut her off to go to a story about people saying what they want to see in the budget. What was so new about that? All the newspapers would have had responses already. In the end we did not get the full story of what happened from 6.

Different story for the 7pm news. Charlene Stuart wrote a good story, this time with the Prime Minister and the Central Bank Governor included, as well as she wrote a few other stories.
One of them highlighted the response of Consumer Activist Hazel Brown to the symposium. She called it an election gimmick (typical Hazel), and there was also a response from the coal pot man himself, David Abdullah.

Kudos too to Rosemarie Sant of CNC3. She had similar stories, and also used the Hazel Brown piece about the breast feeding. But Rosemarie, why did you need to use so many soundbites from the Prime Minister? He spoke more than five times in your story and in the end, it sounded boring rather than informative. CNMG already gave live coverage of his speech. All we needed from you was a synopsis of the salient points.

But a big failing grade to C News. After all-day live coverage, one would have thought that they would have been reeling off stories for the 7pm news. But alas, it was not to be. Golda Lee introduced the one and only story from the symposium at the top of the newscast, and that was it.

At least CNC 3 also had the sense to use the food prices symposium as a side bar story for their business feature at the end of the news. But another failing grade for TV6. Their Inside Business feature was a BBC story on the increasing price of ingredients for Nestle products. Tut tut, TV6. Where were the producers?

And we guess C News producers were also missing in action, since they ran a story about a new Blackberry on offer from TSTT within the first 15 minutes of the newscast (and it was long!).
Wonder if TSTT paid for that spot?