Zahra Gor­don

The broad­cast of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship pre-bud­get ral­ly on Sat­ur­day at Ch­agua­nas could cost the par­ty at least $260,000. The ral­ly was aired on three ma­jor tele­vi­sion sta­tions-CNC3, CN­MG, and TV 6-and nine ra­dio sta­tions, in­clud­ing Ra­dio Jagri­ti, Talk City 91.1 and Pow­er 102 FM. Al­though Yaseen Ra­haman, vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA), told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view that it would be "high­ly un­eth­i­cal" to dis­close the amount the par­ty paid to broad­cast, Ali­cia Boodoos­ingh, mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor of Ra­dio Jagri­ti, dis­closed a fig­ure. Boodoos­ingh said Ra­dio Jagri­ti charges $2,300 per hour. Air­ing of the ral­ly broad­cast on Jagri­ti cost a min­i­mum of $9,200, as the ral­ly aired from 3 to 7 pm. Boodoos­ingh was un­able to give an ex­act cost for the en­tire broad­cast.

Ra­haman said, how­ev­er, that rates dif­fer be­tween ra­dio sta­tions de­pend­ing on the size of the sta­tion and the num­ber of tech­ni­cal staff used in pro­duc­ing the broad­cast. He added that ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions which be­long to con­glom­er­ates may present spe­cial rates to cus­tomers. An un­of­fi­cial fig­ure from a CNC3 pro­duc­er was that Sat­ur­day's broad­cast cost be­tween $50,000 and $60,000. Ra­haman said rates for TV sta­tions var­ied as well and de­pend­ed on the in­di­vid­ual me­dia hous­es. TTP­BA pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said po­lit­i­cal par­ties and gov­ern­ments were not privy to any broad­cast­ing dis­counts, and point­ed out that broad­casts dur­ing prime-time hours (6 -11pm) were more ex­pen­sive. Oth­er ra­dio sta­tions on which the ral­ly was broad­cast in­clude Her­itage Ra­dio, Tam­brin, 103 FM, and Ra­dio 90.5.