DEAN AND THE BUDGET

Well it's the day after Hurricane Dean and D-Day for the national budget. EVERYONE pulled out all the stops. Media Watch was very pleased because we had our hands (and eyes and ears) full.
Where shall we begin? We'll start with Gayelle (and it's not necessarily the best first!).

We must admit right off the bat that we have not seen the morning show for a while so we'm not sure if the host of Cock-A-Doodle-Doo is new or not. Well young Khamal you didn't do too badly in your post-Hurricane Dean interviews. We couldn't tell if anyone was feeding you questions when you spoke by phone with Kingsley Cooper and D.K. Rostant (Trini student) in Jamaica. Almost flawless (however someone spelt Cooper's name as Copper).
But aam, we don't aam, understand why aam, you find it necessary to aam, use that aam, annoying word so often! Within a two minute period we counted eleven.

That MSNBC feature on Hurricane Dean looked as if your producer planted a camera in front of a computer and hit record. The video and audio were terrible. We don't mind the idea, but do it properly next time.
And Khamal you didn't mention the budget. We fully understood why later in the day because you did not carry the Prime Minister's presentation, but preferred instead to rehash D.K.'s phone interview. Eight hours later that information was no longer relevant.

IETV's pre-budget coverage was Vernon Ramesar interviewing former PNM senator Nafeesa Mohammed.
Channel 4 stuck to its magazine format with a few bits and pieces about the hurricane, but someone could have put the weather updates in the teleprompter for Ruskin Mark. Every time he bent over to read the information, all we saw was the top of his shiny head, and he stayed in that position for a long time.

CNMG/Talk City 91.1 was pretty good, a la Imus in the Morning (on the radio but also simulcast on television). Jessie May Ventour (formerly of 104 and 93) and Fazeer Mohammed (formerly of TBC and TV6) had quite a good mix with the hurricane interviews and the pre-budget discussions.

Andy Johnson is back on TV6, and co-host Dr Morgan Job looked very disinterested in the pre-budget discussions when they were on the set together with Vasant Bharath, Hazel Brown and Carolyn Seepersad Bachan (formerly of the UNC). Their coverage went to
8-30, along with the post-hurricane interviews (again we had former beauty pageant contestant and journalist Nasma Mohammed-Chin).

CNC3's morning budget panel included Robert Mayers and Dr Ronald Ramkissoon.
But CNC, after your show ended at 8am, why did you re-run that CMC newscast from last Friday night with passengers scrambling to get out of Barbados AHEAD of Hurricane Dean? Thankfully CNMG had the up to date version with Desmond Brown interviewing someone in Jamaica post-Dean.