LOTS OF STUFF

The media landscape seems to be heating up once again...the economy is making headlines as well as the inclement weather and country-wide flooding.
On Monday evening, the Central Bank Governor's pronouncements on the state of the economy were certainly attention-grabbing. To put it succinctly, DOMA President Gregory Aboud said "A bout of sanity is about to be revisited." (in terms of government's handling of that portfolio).

Sherwin Long of C News chose to begin his story on this issue with a standup. Not sure why. Then he chose as his background a shot of Ewart Williams doing a one-on-one interview with another reporter. Again, not sure why. Yet all the soundbites from Mr Williams that Sherwin used were of the Central Bank Governor at the podium during his speech. So Sherwin, you didn't figure to get Mr Williams to do a one-on-one with you as well?
Anyway we appreciated that you gave prominence to the IMF official's comments in the same story, rather than just giving us one by-the-way, stand-alone soundbite like we got from TV6.
And at 10pm that Central Bank story was still relevant as the lead, but somehow TV6's producer decided to push it back to third place behind a school protest and some other story. (Maybe some enterprising reporter {a la CNN's Jeanne Moos} can do a story on the anatomy of carrying out a school protest and send the results to TTUTA for inclusion in the school curriculum. Module I: You don't need to know how to spell to make a placard).

Charlene Ramdhanie's story on the aftermath of the deadly mudslide in Maraval was well written, very descriptive and she did a good standup, but the last shot in the story killed it. She talked about the clean up efforts in the village continuing, yet we saw none of it. What we did see was just a wide shot of the backhoe which was probably being used in the clean up effort. So what if someone had not seen the devastation of the surrounding area in the newscasts on Sunday?
Melissa Williams of CNC 3 on the other hand had much better cutaways for her story, as well as various soundbites from villagers describing the clean up effort.

C News launched their new set and graphics. Very spiffy. We thought though that you went a bit overboard on the very first night by using that online comment from someone saying he loved the new look. How do we know that's not just some 'pardner' of a staff member?

Onto sport. Robert Dumas, we are not sure who writes some of your scripts, but the video is very boring. For the story on Yusuf (the Pakistani cricketer), we saw just three shots in that story, and we are sure it was longer than one minute. The three shots were of him moving to sit at a table for a press conference, answering reporters' questions and a wide shot of the reporters. For a moment we thought you had embodied Yusuf as we were hearing your voice and seeing his lips moving.
And the person who wrote the story had some difficulty going into your video archives to find footage of Yusuf actually playing cricket? Steups! You do your viewers a disservice.

Odeka O'Neil-Seaton read the 9:30pm CNC 3 newscast. Her makeup looked good, not overdone as it sometimes does, but she read the news as if she were disinterested, or maybe distracted. We're not sure which one. But we didn't pay much attention to what she was saying because her nonchalance was very distracting.

According to Sampson Nanton, Sheraz Khan is the "President of the Sheep and Goat Association". That title ran at 7pm and 9:30pm. Hmmmm. Yes Sampson he has a goatee, but his title should be "President of the Sheep and Goat Farmers Association".

Miss Williams-Allard of TV6 was not to be outdone when she told us that the THA is being sued by the family of Yannick Quesnel (her pronunciation of his last name was kwes-nel). That ran at 7pm and 10pm. Hmmmm. Miss Williams-Allard, it's actually pronounced 'kennel'.