Live coverage of Centro Basket; OYE goes to Santo Domingo

william neal

The regional Centro Basket competition in Santo Domingo kicks off this coming Monday. All eyes will be on Belize’s national team that placed second at the COCABA games in Cancun. This round of competition will be even fiercer and we are pleased to announce that we will be bringing it live to your living rooms. My co-host, William Neal will travel with the Belize’s National Basketball Team as they represent our Olympic dreams at the Centro Basket Tournament.  We will televise the behind the scenes, locker room pep talks, team practices, and the emotions of the National Team as well as the sights and sounds of Santo Domingo.  We once again team up for the broadcast with our friends at Love FM which will also provide live coverage on radio.  Neal spoke to News Five about the details of the operation.

William Neal, Co-Host, Open Your Eyes

“This is a continuation of a partnership between Love FM and Channel 5 to bring the best coverage. We’ve seen that before in elections, general and municipal, elections, where we’ve partnered to get correspondence from all over the country to definitely bring the best coverage to people and into their homes. It’s the same—in that same vein that we’re working here where we’re going to the Dominican Republic and they will be doing radio coverage and we will do television coverage. We bought the exclusive rights to the games and so that means we’re the only ones who will be able to show it and they will be the only ones who will be able to carry it on radio.”

Jose Sanchez

“So essentially the entire country has to tune in to Channel Five and Love to see the games.”

William Neal

“Well, yes.”

Jose Sanchez

“In addition to the games, will there be any coverage of the practices, the highs and lows of what the team goes through as part of the experience?”

William Neal

“Well, what we intend to do is I’ll be travelling with Alex Ellis to the Dominican Republic and We’re going to be doing pre and post game interviews with the coaches and the players and that will be fed into the news and of course Open Your Eyes. We’re hoping that on a daily basis we’ll be able to talk with Marleni and do some updates and do a little bit of analysis and talk to some of the people on the ground to see exactly what has been happening with the team and how they feel because I think there’s the whole emotional, there’s the physical side, there are so many other components to making a team click. And I think it’s just giving you a holistic view of what is happening there in the DR that we aim to do and the coverage that we will provide. We have the stars basically aligned for us to do the best we’ve ever done on the world stage in terms of basketball with the core members of the National Basketball Team and the additions. If we don’t do this now and make the next step towards the Olympics I think we may miss it. And I think the national pride and the whole national consciousness has to be singing one song, so to speak, that we give them as much support as is possible.”

Remember that the Centro Basket games in the Dominican Republic will be shown live, right here on Five.