EDITOR, The Tribune.

A gold medal for The Bahamas on the penultimate day of track and field competition in the stadium was enough to make up for the crushing disappointment we felt at the other relays and most of the other individual competitors. Nothing, however, could make up for the astonishing incompetence of ZNS in its transmission of the games.

Using the iMc feed that provided live coverage throughout the 16 days, the ZNS people still managed to show an amateurish and penny-pinching approach to the festival of world class sport. How else can we describe the total lack of awareness to the showing of the commercials from the sponsors? These commercials were shown in blocks and took up many minutes at a time and were often placed without any regard for what was actually happening on the track, in the water or anywhere else. I was on tenterhooks all through the finals, wondering if we were going to miss Bolt, Farah, Kirani or the men’s 400 team because someone switched on the commercials without paying attention to what was happening.

A 1500 meter race had just started and suddenly we were being assailed by demands to watch some basketball at Atlantis in November! The race finished long before the commercials ended. The final of the men’s 800 meters was missed altogether and so viewers were denied seeing a new world record in one of this century’s great track performances. I called to ask ZNS if anyone was actually watching the feed in the studio so the timing of the commercials could be monitored to avoid missing events; I also suggested breaking up the commercials into shorter units but my suggestions were greeted with a sucking of the teeth from the young lady who answered my inquiry who then exhorted me to “have a nice day” as she put down the phone.

And tragic as it was to see Leevan Sands collapse with a serious knee injury, did we really need to see it 77 times in real time and slow motion to grasp the fact that he had hurt himself?

Then there was the total lack of Bahamian input or coordination in the studio. OK, that clown who does the sport in Freeport was an anchor for iMc and Frank Rutherford was on too but where were Bahamian pundits in the studio who could, with a bit of pre-planning and forward thinking from ZNS, have been in the studio behind Collins Avenue giving some informed comments and opinions from a Bahamian perspective? I don’t believe no one could have been found to provide some local commentary and I further do not believe it would have cost very much to set up a camera and a few chairs but ZNS just abdicated all responsibility and left the transmission running without any thought for its home audience.

If ZNS wants us to take it seriously then it must do much better.

GORDON MILLS

Coordinator College Prep Humanities

College of The Bahamas,

Nassau,

August 13, 2012.