Break Time

The radio station also has a small cafeteria, and it was nice to sit down with assignment editor Jameel, news director Manik and managing editor Jinah to discuss some of the issues. Radio has a much more professional working environment overall, compared to the TV station. The morning meeting has evolved into a serious discussion of covering the real news in an interesting way instead of covering the press releases. Still, there is room for improvement. Some reporters still try to cover stories from their desks intead of venturing out for natural sound. The engineer running the board is not a news person and as a result the production values are pretty low. Sometimes there is dead air when a correction must be made or a script comes in late. The music is a Maldivian folk tune which doesn't sound very "newsy." There is only a single news reader, and another person to read a section of news from the outlying atolls. A double anchor format, an engineer who is actually following the script and better production music would enhance the main 1:30 pm news broadcast considerably.