Dear Editor,

The National Communications Network CEO visited Berbice last Sunday to host a live call-in programme to discuss NCN Berbice with the general public. Well, in fact, the greater part of the programme was about discussing Radio’s Needy Children Fund and Red House in Georgetown. The regular promises for improved services in radio and television were made, and then there were the telephone calls.

There were about five or six telephone calls on the programme, whereby 90% of the callers congratulated the entity for its work in Berbice. I wanted to get on to the programme to say my bit to tell it like it is, however, I was strangely outwitted and outnumbered by the ‘positive’ callers. Five positive telephone calls about the entity, though, are not indicative of the views of the whole of Berbice, as others would like to make it appear.

Just imagine the CEO telling Berbicians last Sunday that NCN had to cover the government more than the opposition because the US media and media in other democracies always give more airtime to covering government and their issues. Berbicians are not idiots!  Who is he fooling?

So tell me, is it a coincidence that Leon Suseran writes about bringing back the shortwave signals for our brothers and sisters in interior locations and a few weeks later, the newspapers report that shortwave is back up and running?

I know NCN Radio (especially 98.1 FM) has bills to pay, but can they at least structure the playing of commercials during the evening periods and during programmes aired on Mondays, Tuesdays and even Friday nights? What a poor display of a radio station. We have announcers just ranting on one thing over and over and over. Monday and Friday night ‘Moods’ have become talk sessions with and about the sponsors of that programme. If four or five songs are played in that 8-9pm hour, listeners are lucky. It’s just appalling. If people wanted talk-radio, they’d tune in to some other broadcast, maybe online.

But this is NCN. You can complain and complain and still complain about certain things and nothing would change! Because politics is behind the running and operation of this entity, good cannot and will never come. The ‘puppeteers’ would always be the bigger bosses and the higher powers that be.

Yours faithfully,
Leon J. Suseran