FRIDAY NEWS

IETV, your video output at the start of the 6.30pm news on Friday evening was so poor Media Watch is guessing many of your limited viewers switched off after five minutes.
At first Media Watch thought your cameraman was to blame for the overexposed video on that story with the environmental protestors, but then when we saw it extended to the T&TEC story with Kamla Persad Bissessar, then to Devanand Ramlal's response, then the COP meeting, as well as the first two commercials in the first break we knew there was a problem. Well at that point a really bad headache and eye strain set in so we switched.
Thankfully after the break the problem was fixed by your engineers.
But why did you have Giselle McIntyre voice the first three stories? And why is Maxine Maharaj sitting behind a desk so high that she looks like a receptionist?

CNMG began with Julian Rogers giving a rundown of the station's weekend election coverage; it was very long and perhaps should have been done just before the first break.
TV6 began with the release of PC Tota Maharaj who was charged with killing Joel Caton Jnr. Well Cherise D'Abadie said he was Joel "Cat-on". Her producer probably shouted the correct pronunciation in her ear because thankfully she came back in the next sentence with the right thing.
And even though your producer wanted to start with that story, it should have been done differently. We are in height of the election season, so naturally elections stories lead. So you could have started by reading a few lines from the main elections story, then say "We'll come back to those stories, but first..." and then go to the Caton story.

CNC 3's Shelly Dass began with a voice over with Police Commissioner Trevor Paul saying the police will give their full support on election day, then they went to Patrick Manning saying the PNM will win the election.
CNMG's first story was Hema Ramkissoon on Kamla Persad Bissessar and the CCA light poles. All the stations wrote about Basdeo Panday wooing motorists, but if you joined CNMG while that story was in progress, there was no way to figure out who voiced it since the natural sound at the end drowned out the reporter's voice.

WIN TV began with politics as well, but somewhere along the line they went to a packaged story on the COTT awards by 7:10, complete with Machel Montano and his entourage, Destra Garcia singing and special guest Billy Ocean. Then Sunil went to a report out of New York from Andrew Bruce on how Trinis living abroad feel the candidates did not deal with issues on the campaign trail.
Then about 15 minutes later, Sunil cues another package from the same COTT awards from the same reporter, Reay Greaves! This one had sound bites from Howard Chin Lee and a shot of Lord Nelson. So Sunil, why did you instruct her to cut the story in two?

But the best story of the night was CNC 3's "exclusive" interview with UNC A candidate Lennox Smith and his wife. In Sampson Nanton's story, Miss Guerra read a prepared statement admitting that she was paid to make what she called "false" statements against Mr Smith. She said she wanted to clear her conscience out of love for him, and denied she was offered money to retract her statement. (She deserves a Cacique). So spliced into the story are shots of them staring into each other's eyes and hugging each other. Then at the very end, they locked lips! EWWW! When Shelly came back on air she looked either like she was going to throw up or laugh out loud.
Mr Smith broke the story in the Express so technically he couldn't go back to them to say Oops! she made a mistake, but he went to a cable station? How many people saw that story?
Thankfully at least the lip lock was chopped out for the 10pm news.

No live video from the campaign trail tonight, and we'll forgive everyone involved since they are likely preparing for the marathon of political rallies in Port of Spain, Aranguez and Tacarigua on Saturday. But CNMG had Hema Ramkissoon and Golda Lee on the telephone from the hustings with the COP and the UNC A.
But Julian, when Hema reported that Suruj Rambachan said Eudine Job Davis had resigned from the PNM, Media Watch was expecting you to have someone call her up and immediately confirm or deny it so you could use that in your 9pm newscast. What was the problem?
No phone interviews from TV6. Guess the reporters all preparing too.

Naette Lee looks great! She cut her hair and it looks soft with a nice sheen and it frames her face. It makes her look mature and professional, along with the black and white outfit and the string of pearls, instead of just some teeny bopper filling her time by reading the news before going to the club.

Well the TV6 Extra was a recap of the "issues" they've dealt with in the last few weeks, but each and every piece turned out to be a music video. Maybe if you had light content that would have been fine, but it just seemed as if you were making a mockery of this serious business of elections.
First you had the recap on Kamla Persad Bissessar's snub by the UNC, to the sounds of David Rudder's "Bacchanal Woman" and Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". Then you moved to "Dollar Wine", referring to the amount of money spent on the campaign trail, Sparrow and Machel helped the candidates pitch their message, and a medley of the campaign songs.

The one thing you finally got right was the short, succinct soundbites from the young people. That's how it should have been done throughout the series, rather than one looong piece from each youth each night.
And Bobbi bid us farewell, saying this was the end of the Extra series. So pray tell what will the powers that be at TV6 do with Bobbi from next week?

And TV6 what was the point of once again extending your two hour newscast by 15 minutes? The news went to 8:45 and the TV6 Extra ended at 9:15, but Media Watch did not notice an over-abundance of news. What we did notice was an over-abundance of political ads! At one point you did one short story then took a break, then the story out of Tobago then another break.
Well that's what happens when you put sweetie managers in charge of a media house. At the end of the day we hope the profits (which Bobbi told us is more than $1M) trickle down to your employees. Do you even care that your product is being compromised, while your viewers have to sit through ten minutes of ads to see one story?