Arising from an earlier blog Down By The Riverside fellow blogger from the Living In Barbados Blog expressed the view that private enterprise must be allowed to manage to stay afloat and make money for shareholders (parsing). We have no problem with that position, the flip side however is that BU has the freedom to critique the genuineness of decisions taken as we perceive them. As a corporate citizen the public’s perception should be of value to the Nation Group of Companies.
We are aware that three hundred daily newspapers have gone out of business in the last 25 years in the United States. We are aware that the main reason from the drop in circulation has been because the younger readers have been tapping into Internet based sources like blogs, free online news sources etc.
Unfortunately we have to take the word of the OCM Group Chairman Sir Fred Gollop about the reason for sending home Adonijah and 20+ other media workers from the Nation Group of Companies last week. He mentioned about increase cost in newsprint blah blah blah. We have access to the OCM consolidated financial statement for 2008, what we don’t know is how the Barbados companies performed vis-a-vis others in the OCM Group. We have to guess.
Livinginbarbados we read your email sent today (23/03/2009), coincidentally we had several similar websites open in the BU browser. What is obvious is that newspapers in the USA are failing because of competing news channels first and for other reasons a distant second. In Barbados there is no similar competing interest. Although the blogs have been aggressively taking up issues which mainstream media have been dragging feet, sad to say we are not yet mass-based in appeal.
It is interesting to note that when OCM was formed it was touted then that the Nation Group of companies would benefit from economies of scale. It is obvious to BU that the sending home of Nation staff immediately after declaring a profitable 2008 was insensitive and premeditated. What is tells us most of all is that Port of Spain is in control. How could Harold Hoyte sit on the Board of OCM and vote to send home Adonijah?
Back to the point of this blog. Even if we concede that the cost of newsprint is on the rise, how does it explain sending home staff from VOB the radio station? Remember that according to the Systematic Survey (whatever that is) VOB and the Nation newspaper dominate the market. Couldn’t management provide options to staff i.e. staff freezes, salary cuts, waive bonus payments to executive staff etc?
The characteristics of the US media are far different to what prevails in Barbados. Barbadians and West Indians generally continue to rely on newspapers as the go to news source. The majority of the advertising dollars continue to be given to the printed media. Up to now we have not seen any major change in the approach of the Nation Group of companies to show that it is willing to transform to a more interactive media form. In other words it is prepared to cut payroll to respond to the challenges ahead. We applaud their ingenuity.
Isn’t it strange that the Nation Group has decided to cut relatively low level staff? We could think of several fat cats who continue to work at the Nation Group. Commonsense tells us that as the economic situation worsens we may yet see some more cuts at a company which not too long ago was proudly Bajan.
We feel some affinity to Adonijah. Do you know that Adonijah was the fourth son of King DAVID?
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.