Government has announced the cutting of print advertising in favor of the Internet and radio. When questioned regarding the switch, Premier Ewart Brown championed electronic media as the best way to get the government's message out.
"The whole world is moving toward the Internet and in Bermuda we have seen in the last few years the radio is an important medium for Bermuda. There will be an increase in radio time purchased."
An increase in radio time you say? Hmm, will Hott 107.5 be the recipient of the greatest amount of radio spending? How about electronic media, could one guess that Bermuda Network News will become a new hot spot for advertising? Perhaps we shouldn't look up that definition of cronyism again.
Perhaps it won't be anything like cronyism and they'll rely on good old gov.bm, which thus far has proven incredibly reliable when it comes to getting the right message out. Examples include reports on education that Senators assure us are there, though they might be invisible. How about bus schedules which remain more than 8 months out of date? What if you'd care to look up this years budget on the Finance Ministry's home page or budget's page? Hmm, on second thought, perhaps the Premier should have a chat with the Cabinet, especially the Transport Minister, about getting their acts together before discussing the efficiency of the, uh, Internets.
Also in line for cuts is Government travel and its vehicle fleet. Somehow it would be unsurprising if lavish Minister travel is not subject to such cuts nor is a reduction of the number of GP cars flooding our roads targeted. Such services are clearly far more essential than print advertising and media subscriptions.
Perhaps one should be thankful for these cuts. They'll allow us to pay off debts such as those that provided our fabulous $130,000 media room or our $1.5 million renovations on a house that remains empty.
Your comment about the bus schedules struck a chord with me. Last month I had three business guests that were interested in going out to dinner and seeing a bit of the island. After checking the ferry schedules on www.gov.bm, I suggested we take a ferry from Hamilton to Dockyard and have dinner at the Frog and Onion.
We had a nice leisurely ferry ride, got to see the island from the water, and followed the trip with a nice meal. It was then that we discovered that the boat we arrived on was the last ferry of the evening, in spite of what the www.gov.bm ferry schedule indicated. Of course, we called a cab - several, in fact - but couldn't convince one to come to Dockyard to collect us.
Embarassed, and quite frankly irate, I loaded by business visitors onto a bus to Hamilton.
What's the point of putting the schedules online if they have no correlation with the actual schedule in use?
Posted by: Andrew | March 31, 2008 at 09:59 PM