Officials at The Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (BCB) said the company’s decision to reassign a number of their popular news personalities to other departments had nothing to do with victimisation, but is only a part of a much needed organisational restructuring.
According to press release sent out by ZNS General Manager Edwin Lightbourn, the corporation is now currently undergoing a transformation designed to return the corporation “to its prominent position in the marketplace in news and television programming.”
When news first broke last week that a number of popular faces at ZNS like Clint Watson, Shenique Miller, Carla Palmer and Syann Thompson would be leaving frontline reporting, talks of victimisation surfaced, but ZNS officials said it’s nothing personal.
“We are working to strengthen our national news, re-establish a Local TV Production Department to create high quality indigenous programmes for the benefit and enjoyment of Bahamians as we transition to a digital format early next month,” Mr. Lightbourn said in the release.
“The corporation has therefore decided that a number of staff in the News Department will be reassigned to the newly created Local TV Production Department along with necessary technical personnel to produce programming that Bahamians will gravitate to. In order to bring a fresh focus to news, several staff adjustments will be made including new hires to replace those persons reassigned to television production and programming.”
The release added that management met with the affected staff members individually on August 16, 2012 to advise them of the impending adjustments.
“During the restructuring exercise no staff member will be terminated or suffer loss of salary or benefits,” the statement continued.
Executive Chairman Rev. Dr. William Thompson said, “While ZNS news remains number one, we have lost significant market share to some of our competitors which we fully intend to regain. ZNS television also loses a sizeable segment of its viewing audience between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. and as a consequence income from ad placements are negligible during this period. We seek to change that with more exciting, innovative programmes to come on stream early in 2013.”
