CARNIVAL NEWS 2

CNC 3 seemed to have the most varied and interesting coverage of Carnival news, for the first 20 minutes of their programme.
Rosemarie had a package dealing with what we'll call celebrities celebrating Carnival, then they had Neil Beekhee live, as well as Roger live, then Sampson Nanton had stories on Carnival celebrations in San Fernando and Tobago. They also had stories from Otto Carrington dealing with J'Ouvert and Samuel McKnight with Carnival in east Trinidad.
But Sampson why did you voice both those stories (and they were run back to back).
Did your other reporters (Hema, Kimberly, Marcia, Satesh) have the day off?

But Rosemarie, at some point your reporter Janelle took off her reporter cloak and put on the cloak of enamoured, star struck masquerader when she started wining on Brian Lara while she was interviewing him! Tell her to keep it professional.
Yes this may be the one and only time she gets to interview the Prince of Port of Spain, but she still has to go back to work.

Odeka and Shelly looked decent. And thanks Shelly for telling us just as your newscast began that Eric Mackie had the night off.
That was too much to ask of Samantha John at TV6. Not only did she not tell us that the weatherman would not be around, she also conveniently forgot to mention that her regular co-anchor Cherise D'Abadie had the night off on Friday and Monday. It was as if the woman did not exist. Samantha we've said it before and we'll say it again: mind your manners.
It's just a courtesy to your viewers to let them know what happened to the person they see every night. Common sense will tell them she's not there, but you need to be courteous.

Well the TV6 newscast began with 5 minutes of murders, shootings, stabbings, and a body that was found. There was really no indication that it was Carnival Monday, only through the headline about the reign of the merry monarch.
Then they took a break.
Right after the break, they came back with a story about Brian Keui Tung being injured while playing mas, so Samantha tossed to Karen Cozier-Phillip outside a mas camp. She said he was "bounced down" by a music truck and suffered several fractures, and that he was "being held" at a medical institution for treatment.

Finally we saw video from the Dimanche Gras show, but only of Sugar Aloes, the eventual winner. Not a shot of the King and Queen of Carnival. But Samantha cued a story by saying they caught up with the queen, but the video stopped abruptly and she moved on to another story, but when that also didn't come up, she again moved on to other news.
They ran the same story with the Commissioner of Police saying Carnival was crime free, even though they led with 5 minutes of crime. Then Samantha came back to camera to say that despite the commissioner's statement, there were several incidents of crime. So why use the Commissioner's soundbite without saying the interview had been done since 7am when there really were no recorded crimes??

Then Sasha Mohammed threw in about 4 stand ups for her story on the Parade of the Bands in Port of Spain. Why? You recorded those stand ups as if you were live, so when we saw the story at 7:15, the information seemed stale. Why didn't you just script those bits?

Did Shabaka Kambon get the day off as well? The reporter with the Spanish accent did Latin America Today. Her pronunciation is a little bit better, but her reading is stilted.

And once again some planning ahead would have told you that if you have that technical segment every week, why not try to do something different for Carnival?
Instead of just using a BBC story on HDTV, why not try to look at some technical innovation in pan or mas?

And that story from Elizabeth Williams-Allard on J'Ouvert had repeated shots.
She didn't have two fresh minutes of video from Tobago for that? And what about the story on the Parade in the afternoon? She didn't say where the parade took place. All we know is that the Roxborough Police Band crossed the judging point first. Where was this??

And finally there was not a single frame of Carnival video to end the newscast. Just an overhead shot of Samantha on the news set.
Your camera crews were out all day long shooting video of masqueraders, people fully costumed since early in the morning, and you couldn't edit just two minutes of that to end your newscast?
Hope we see some improvements on Tuesday.