Something is just not right

Apr 12, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

Housewives, more than anyone else, know that the best thing to do with limited finance is to seek the best bargains. I have had the fortune or misfortune to go shopping first with my mother, and then with my now ex-wife. In those days, money was never enough and there was so much that was needed.
Buying food was one thing and I still remember my mother traveling to the city and having me walking from store to store looking for bargains. What was most frustrating was having to visit a store, see a price, then walk to a host of others only to come back to the first store to make a purchase. It was tedious and my mother never considered buying a soft drink for me to quench my thirst after all that walking.

What I remember most was the look of satisfaction on her face at the end of a day. Looking back, the bargain was no more than perhaps three of four dollars. Of course four dollars was a lot in those days but the toll on my body was much more.
In my adult years the same exercise caused me to say that I would remain at a location and when the shopping was over I would be there. For me, if I see something and I wanted it I would buy it wherever it was and groan later when I see the same thing cheaper.

It is the same with advertisers, No advertiser would place an advertisement where no one would see it or where it would be exposed to the most limited view. It is for this reason that advertisements on broadcasts of the Super Bowl cost so much. I have always said that if all the television stations in Guyana should get two minutes of Super Bowl advertisements they could all afford to broadcast cheap or for free. Those two minutes generate more money than all the television stations put together earn in a given year.
It is the same with other high viewing events such as the Olympics and NBA basketball and even boxing cards, although not as much as the Super Bowl. Even Wimbledon does not attract as much money for advertisement.

A few years back, the government came to realize that in order to get the best value for money was to place advertisements where they were most likely to be seen. After some careful consideration it concluded that Kaieteur News had the largest circulation so it stood to reason that more people would see its advertisement.

There was also the conscious decision to advertise in the state media because commonsense would dictate that a parent would never ignore his or her child for anyone else. Stabroek News suffered and there was a hue and cry. The managers of that newspaper mounted protests, one of them outside the Caricom Secretariat headquarters when a regional meeting was to be held. It took that protest to the Caribbean, seeking the help of prominent media organizations and decision-makers there.

Kaieteur News had gone ten years without advertisement from the government and therefore could not understand all the fuss. Of course, Government was not compelled to invest with any private organization. That was a position that some have come to rescind because as the argument goes, the money comes from the taxpayers and the wider society should benefit.
But there was the argument that the advertisements were being placed where the government could get the best value for money.

Today that argument seems to have gone through the window because the government is placing advertisements in a newspaper with a ridiculously small readership. When asked about this, President Bharrat Jagdeo, who defended the placing of advertisements in Kaieteur News as opposed to Stabroek News, calmly said that he does not deal with advertisements.

Indeed, government advertisements have returned to Stabroek News, but they have also gone to Guyana Times, the newest newspaper on the block with the smallest circulation. Certainly this is a waste of good money unless the government has seen it fit to help the newspaper.
For what reason? I am certain that had I started a newspaper I would not have got such help, because in the world of private enterprise it is often survival of the fittest. In the United States, Barack Obama, when he assumed office as President of the United States, allowed the weak industries to collapse. He bailed out those that were important.

I must admit that the placement of government advertisements is not widespread, but at this time when money is needed for so many other things every dollar counts and needs to be husbanded.
The private companies that advertise with that newspaper would have their reason. Perhaps they have money to burn so they place their advertisement in every nook and cranny. But for the government to do the same is not good economics and makes no sense.

There is talk that some government people have a share in the new newspaper. If that is the case then the act is criminal. It is a case of using state funds to feather a nest.
And Stabroek News is quiet. Perhaps it has a fear that it could once more lose this source of income.