YOUTH, Sports and Culture Minister Mario Bowleg.
By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
YOUTH, Sports and Culture Minister Mario Bowleg revealed yesterday that 90 percent of the team contracted to produce a virtual Junkanoo show had COVID-19, which has affected the production.
A day after he told The Tribune the production’s quality could have been better, Mr Bowleg reiterated to reporters that the Bahamian company hired for the job faced challenges that caused the production not to be up to standard.
Asked about these challenges, he said: “We (are) in a COVID environment and sad to say 90 percent of the production team got COVID and they were unable to do their work that would allow them to meet the deadline or do their work to the perfection I should say to allow them to meet the deadline that we wanted to air the production.
“Unfortunately, the work that they would’ve put in would’ve not been sufficient to satisfy us but again I’m not taking anything away from them. They’re gonna correct their errors and we’re gonna move forward.”
The show aired on January 1 on television and social media, but there were some complaints from viewers about the quality of the production.
Mr Bowleg said once industry stakeholders and ministry officials review the corrected programme, it will be rebroadcast.
Mr Bowleg also gave a breakdown of the cost of production.
The Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture previously said the budget for virtual Junkanoo for New Providence, Grand Bahama and the Family Islands amounted to $300,000.
The ministry said it provided $126,000 to Junkanoo groups as a stipend, providing grants of $11,000 to seven Category A groups and $7,000 to seven Category B groups.
“On production and advertising, the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture spent $24,000 on production and $200 on audio advertising.
“The remaining balance of the $300,000 will be spent on the virtual parades for Grand Bahama and the Family Islands,” the ministry said in a statement issued over the weekend.
Comments
moncurcool 2 years, 3 months ago
Seriously, this is gross incompetence by the Minister and his team. What leader puts out a production before they see it to approve it going out? How in the world does the Ministry not view the product before allowing it to go on tv? Trying to make excuses now does not cut the gross incompetence in my book
Sickened 2 years, 3 months ago
Yup. Pretty disgraceful! There should have been some porn edited in the version just to make a point - and to make it worth watching.
Baha10 2 years, 3 months ago
Forget the Embarrassment … the reality is Covid can not be used as an excuse 2 years hence for quality control and not making deadlines as those only become issues when things are left to the “last minute” … but most importantly … I “thought” we were BROKE!?!
Sickened 2 years, 3 months ago
Never too broke to give friends and family a big pay day.
yeahyasee 2 years, 3 months ago
LMAO
ThisIsOurs 2 years, 3 months ago
This ministry has important work to do, so its almost a good thing that this happened early.
Were they out of commission for the shoot or the editing? If they were out of commission for the shoot, the blame is in the ministry, the event should have been cancelled, because the quality standards they set before they engaged any company would have stated how many cameras they needed. Then they would have had a walk through at least a week before to see how people would be positioned and the best angles fir the cameras. Then at some point in their pre-live checks the day before, morning of and 1hr before the shoot, they would have discovered they didnt have a team capable of delivering quality.
If the outage happened at editing, I dont get it... editing is remote work
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