Channel 5, Love to provide joint election coverage

The announcement of the date for general elections has not only set numerous political wheels into motion but also has the news media reacting as well. Today Channel Five and Love FM announced plans to provide joint coverage on election day and night. According to station heads Stewart Krohn and Rene Villanueva, the live broadcast, to be done simultaneously on television and radio, is a first for Belize.

Stewart Krohn, Managing Director, Channel Five

“The idea behind the collaboration is that we’re going to combine the best attributes of both mediums and both news organizations. So we’ll have a lot of reports from the field, which is the strength of radio, you could do a lot of telephone reporting. The strength of television is the pictures and some of the longer term analysis and we’ll put both those together so whether people are watching, on television at home or whether they are in a more remote spot, in their car listening to radio, the kind of combined coverage they are going to get is something we haven’t seen in Belize before.

So as for example the co-anchors of the coverage, both during the day and on election night, you have Rene Villanueva and Ernesto Vasquez, as co-anchors, there will be a bank of telephones for example on the desk, that’s right behind us, so as a report comes in from the field that will come in live, raw, unedited.”

Rene Villanueva Sr., Managing Director, Love FM

“And we’ll have our statisticians in here as well working out the percentages, as the voters turn out to the polls. Our coverage will start from early in the morning when the polls open and that will continue until the results are in. So we’ll be with you throughout the entire day providing an excellent broadcast coverage of general elections time 1998.”

The coverage will include on screen graphics, numerous guest analysts and winning and losing politicians appearing live both in studio and on location.