Chrissy Love, Steve McKinney & the Future of ZNS

by Larry Smith

The firing of Christina Thompson (aka Chrissy Love) from the ZNS talk show Immediate Response after the May 7 general election has led some to predict the return of the Pingdom, while others see it as mere tit for tat - since the FNM fired Steve McKinney from the same show right after the 2007 election.

In the current charged partisan atmosphere it may be difficult to differentiate these two terminations, but if you look closely there is a distinction.

Thompson had a $200 per show contract with ZNS. She has spent the last 20 years hosting talk shows on several radio stations - including Love 97, More FM and Island FM - and that's basically all she does. Her style is frank and abrupt - sometimes escalating into a feminist rant.

McKinney, on the other hand, was a political operative under the former Christie government who held a 9 to 5 job at Bahamas Information Services, as well as crony contracts with at least two government ministries - in addition to his ZNS show.

As we learned in 2007, those contracts added up to more than $140,000 per annum - meaning Mckinney was collecting more taxpayer bucks than the governor-general, the prime minister, the chief justice, or permanent secretaries.

And surprisingly, his government contracts included perks like paid vacations, sick leave, casual leave, gratuities, etc - all at taxpayer expense.

Under the PLP, Mckinney had a contract to provide communications services for the Ministry of Tourism, which has its own in-house PR and broadcasting unit, as well as an expensive out-house PR firm. And he had a similar contract with the Ministry of Education.

Official PR for both of these ministries is also provided by Bahamas Information Services, another government agency that employs a ton of writers and cameramen (including McKinney until recently) to produce information of dubious value at a cost of $2.6 million a year.

McKinney was able to keep his substantive BIS job under the FNM government - for years after he was fired from Immediate Response. So his termination at ZNS could not be considered victimization. On the other hand, Thompson was completely deprived of her income by the PLP government.

BIS was set up by the Pindling regime in 1974 to "ensure effective communications between the government and the people...to assist the government with public relations, and to promote the policies,  programmes, goals and role of the government." Not incidentally, it also provides jobs for the boys - from whichever party is in power.

So it would be fair to say that Mckinney's contracts were at the very least an egregious duplication of effort, and clearly a misuse of public funds.

But it gets even more curious. As Mckinney himself has said, he held similar contracts under the previous FNM government. The story is that after demanding a top job at ZNS along with a constituency nomination, he switched sides when he didn't get what he wanted. And for the past few years he has been acting as a propaganda shill for Peter Nygard.

The most laughable thing about all this costly public information infrastructure is we still can't get information from the government when we ask for it - no matter which party is in power. And don't hold your breath until the new PLP government implements that half-baked Freedom of Information Bill passed by the FNM earlier this year.

As for Mckinney's contract with ZNS back in 2007 to host the talk show Immediate Response, some may have considered him a Bahamian Howard Stern, the shock jock radio host who was fired from NBC years ago and eventually moved to satellite radio in an effort to escape corporate censorship.

Except that Mckinney was pushing a hard political line on the national broadcast station during a heated election campaign. He could have hosted a show called PLP Propaganda Hour, which the party could have sponsored (and typically not paid for). Then there would be no argument. It wouldn't be more tax dollars wasted on nonsense.

Clearly the circumstances of McKinney's crony contracts, combined with his virulent and amoral political propaganda were such that a normal review by normal people would result in their termination by due process.

Nevertheless, this is what I wrote following McKinney's termination after the 2007 election:  "This issue should not have been dealt with on the political podium, no matter how irritating it was. And it should not have been dealt with by a call from the cabinet secretary (according to Mckinney's account) instructing the general manager at ZNS."

Now the tables have turned, and we are facing a similar narrative about Chrissy Love.

According to Thompson, "(ZNS' two top managers) called me upstairs on Monday, May 14 before going on air and told me they had decided to invoke the clause in my contract which says we can part ways with four weeks notice. They said 'you know we've been receiving complaints about the show for a while...you talk about things like sex and your way of hosting is new to our listeners'  - after three years!

"I was always told that when the PLP came back I was gonna be fired, and they did it... called my name at a PLP rally. Loftus Roker, Shane Gibson, Marguerite Pindling, and other minions and assorted goons told me this for three years. I guess they didn't mess with me at Island FM because Charles Carter is their boy.

"Steve McKinney was a semi-skilled political operative sent to ZNS to shove lies to the masses. Yeah, HAI was wrong to talk about him on the victory rally stage, but how can PLPs condemn that and then threaten me for three years straight, allude to me throughout the campaign, call my name on May 4, then fire me on May 14? It's typical PLP victimization."

This brings us to the real issue - which is what to do about ZNS.

As a member of the Broadcasting Corporation board from 2007 until resigning a couple of weeks ago, I know exactly what to do. It should have been done a long time ago. It was supposed to have been done during our tenure - but sadly it wasn't.

For some reason politicians just can't seem to stomach loosening the reins of state power. The College of the Bahamas faced the same experience with its much-delayed plans to become an autonomous university.

The Mckinney/Thompson business is symptomatic of the larger issues surrounding freedom of information in the Bahamas. Let me explain.

Bahamians had to wait until 1977 for the government to implement television service, private radio was withheld until 1993 and private television did not switch on until 1995. All of this could have happened much earlier, if it wasn't for the usual political bullshit.

Today we can listen to droves of talk shows and watch hundreds of channels via cable or satellite. But ZNS is still an irrational entity, despite strenuous efforts to bring some fiscal and political sanity to the place (when we took over, for example, management did not have the benefit of monthly financial statements, and employees received severance pay when they resigned).

So the question that naturally comes to mind is, what value do we get for the millions we spend on ZNS every year?

The answer, for some, is that Bahamians are able to watch Junkanoo on TV, as well as special events like state funerals, parliamentary openings or political conventions. But Cable Bahamas has a community channel and a parliamentary channel that also do these things - at no cost to the taxpayer. In fact, the obligation to do them is written into its license.

According to Charles Carter, the former ZNS boss whose private radio station once produced news for Cable Bahamas, "There is a cultural and educational role that can best be served by (ZNS). It should be funded by grant and its programming content should reflect the needs, concerns and expectations of our developing society."

Of course, that's the conclusion Carter arrived at after leaving a long politically-appointed career at ZNS. As we all know, he quickly took advantage of the FNM's post-1992 "Ingraham Spring" to set up his own radio station and has never looked back.

His conclusion is essentially the same one that the FNM came to in the 1990s, but balked at implementing for political reasons. Study after study by consultant after consultant have recommended downsizing ZNS, selling off radio channels and running TV as an independent public affairs service.

Unfortunately, the public didn't have the means to make a judgement on the financial viability of ZNS under the previous Christie administration because then chairman Calsey Johnson failed to produce audited statements for five years. We had to spend a lot of time, money and sweat producing those audits during our tenure.

When we took over, ZNS was more than bankrupt. Salaries alone for 2005-06 were almost $10 million, against revenues of about $7 million. Unfunded obligations to government and other creditors were another $9 million (not including millions in unfunded pension liabilities), and the total public subsidy was over $24 million a year, supporting 280 employees - including more than 90 managers.

The details would make you weep. This was the culmination of decades of outrageous political abuse and wholesale financial irresponsibility.

But here we are five years later and ZNS remains a state-run agency directed by a cabinet minister (it was Tommy Turnquest under our tenure, but now it is Bernard Nottage) that simply cannot work in the public interest.

So the question is, what do we do about that?

The FNM's 2007 election manifesto committed the previous Ingraham government to transform ZNS from a financially unsustainable state broadcaster into an autonomous, non-commercial public service broadcaster.

For the record, my position throughout has been that If substantive changes were not made - and made difficult to reverse - conditions at ZNS would continue as they have for the past 40-odd years, and many more millions of taxpayer dollars will be wasted on a value-less and politically emasculated operation.

There is simply no need for the government to be operating a commercial broadcaster - period. The only real need is for a national emergency broadcasting service - which is why ZNS was created in the first place.  This could be achieved via subsidy, or the operation could be reduced to a very cost-effective national service.

As Dr Keva Bethel's advisory committee on the transformation of COB into a university declared a few years back:  “The proper exercise of academic freedom...can only occur in an environment of institutional autonomy that is designed to protect the independence of the institution from partisan influence and the uncertainties of political change.”

The same can be said of ZNS - in spades. Without legal autonomy, any improvements can be reversed at the stroke of a political pen. And as I told my colleagues, you can bet that they will be this time around.

Comments

[Leandra Esfakis]

Will the stoke of the pen include continuing audits? Or is this where the eraser comes out and those audits get swept under the magic carpet where everything unpalatable disappears? Audits are a dangerous precedent giving off a whiff of potential accountability - not one of the top ten features of our culture.
Congratulations to the 2007 -2012 Board for getting that far. Let's hope that it becomes more than an anomolous and isolated blip in the history of ZNS.

[derek]

Clearly Chrissy Love was a mouthpiece of the FNM.

She was also rude, disrespectful, vulgar and venomous. Would you want that type of person to represent your business?

[larry smith]

I don't agree. As noted, she has spent the last 20 years hosting shows on several stations - including PLP Chas Carter's station. Her style is her style.

[coakleysd]

Mr. Smith,
Very informative piece here. Most of it known to you before the 2012 election. Begs to question why call "now" for drastic change. Not that I disagree, but it seems as though your partisan leanings are evident. I've read numeorus articles by you and you walk a fine line iin your critique of the Ingraham Govt. Here, 99% of your article delved into Mr. Mckinney who you've investigated thoroughly. You simply quote Miss Thompson words as though they were fact. Have you spent equal time investigating her career, income, where she gets her talking points from, and who she hacks for? If under HAI, you and the board could turn ZNS around of course HAI, the FNM, and partisan cronies like yourself would claim a joyus success for HAI and the FNM. Not that I mind, but it is hard to find objective Bahamains these days. Everyone leans left or right and screams for change from either side always comes when their side is not in power. When the FNM was there, they tried to do this and that which all spells "FAILURE" just like the PLP. I am so tired of this type of socio-political commentary. It's way old these days.

If ZNS was priavtely owned, she can say what she wants about whoever she wants. Taxpayers as you so eloquently state above pay for taht station. FNMs, PLPs, DNAs, andBahamians of no political or social persuasion. If you can't be OBJECTIVE, RESPECTFUL, AND PROFESSIONAL on MY station that I own and PAY for, GET THE HELL OFF.

[larry smith]

Some fair questions.

I have never been a member or active supporter of any political party (other than the Vanguard Party briefly in my youth). However, we all lean one way or the other depending on how we view the issues.

ZNS and freedom of information are two of my pet subjects. I have written on these subjects for years, and it was on that basis that I was invited to join the BCB board in 2007.

I accepted on the understanding that the government would make good on its manifesto commitment to transform ZNS from a financially unsustainable state broadcaster into an autonomous, non-commercial public service broadcaster.

I drafted the board's proposal to cabinet on the way forward.

Unfortunately, the politicos appear to have only been interested in downsizing ZNS to reduce the level of subsidy and bring some degree of sanity to the operation.

We did make some very constructive improvements to ZNS' operations and finances over the past five years - but the government did not proceed with legislation to make the corporation autonomous.

As a board member I was required to have some discretion - and I was always hoping for the best.

The PLP, sad to say, has never indicated any interest in fixing the abuses and waste at ZNS, nor in divesting the corporation or making it autonomous.

The PLP did promise to turn the COB into an autonomous university - and went some way along that road in its last term - but never took the final plunge.

These two situations - COB and ZNS - are very similar.

And the Thompson/McKinney firings are mere symptoms of the underlying disease.

[Victor]

Seriously, Comrade Smith, you supported the Vanguard Party? I've never met an actual Vanguard supporter before other than the candidates and their families.
I agree with you about DeadNS, btw. the radio stations should have been sold off and shut down a long time ago. The FNM needs to commit to doing that in the next election manifesto and then follow through.

[larry smith]

Plans were well advanced to sell Power 104.

The Corporation consolidated its radio operations by simulcasting ZNS-1 programming on both the AM and FM bands (1540AM and 104.5FM).

The downsizing in 2010 reduced staff by 35 per cent to a total of about 146 (36 in Freeport)

In comparison, Jones Communications employs 60 people to operate JCN-TV and Love 97FM on New Providence.

Tribune Radio Group employs 50 people to operate six radio stations on New Providence and Grand Bahama.

[Ken Clarke]

Chrissy Love was not fired. her contract was concluded in accordance with the provisions laid out in the contract to which she agreed and the contract's signing. Further, the contract was concluded by the same management whch hired her. She boasted about wanting the contract terminated and spoke of the provisions in the contract.

[larry smith]

Like I said, Chrissy and Steve (no matter what view you take of either of them) are symptoms of the real problem - which is irrational political control of ZNS, at a cost of many millions to the Bahamian taxpayer.

[c love]

REALITY CHECK for Coakleysd and Ken Clarke - you don't know your facts. Mr Smith has, and ALWAYS had all the facts about my background as he has been privy to my complaints and kudos about this "post 1992 Bahamas broadcasting industry".

There is no dirt in my life like Mr Mckinney. Unless you would expect him to create a dossier of reasons.THEY DON'T EXIST!

As far as being rude... my style is my style. What you call rude others call TRUTH. Look it up! You know TRUTH...Bahamian kryptonite.

If you wanted news and objectivity when you listened to Immediate Response, then you don't know what talk radio/tv is about.

Second, like most who seek to pretend that this was not classic PLP victimization, both forget that BCB is a quasi government corporation partly funded by taxpayers.

Now, yes, when the PLP is in power the subsidy is raised to cover ALL expenses. That is how you run a propaganda machine, right? CHECK THE RECORD! Now, how the PLP know what to beg the Treasury for is curious as they have ALWAYS neglected the financial accounting necessary to run BCB. (SEE COLUMN ABOVE).

Third, having a solid definition of NEWS, OPINION, TALK & ENTERTAINMENT is required to take part in this conversation.

Fourth, the contract had a clause. It was invoked after years of threats and promises of victimization (the hallmark of the PLP since 1967), and any reference to my leaving/ending my contract was mostly said when I "received complaints" by some of the very names mentioned in the column; when I expressed my frustration at how a corporation can run for seven decades and not get the SIMPLEST things right (mics, phones, staff, guests); or when verbally attacked by rabid supporters on IR without their own thought process.

SPECIAL MENTION to Clarke - I see your posts in other social media and your rabid and sycophantic allegiance to the PLP is well known. I used to work for your brother David and know "how you go"...so your comments here do not surprise me.

Fifth, BCB management was merely acting on the direction of their new PLP bosses, following through on the orders given at the May 4 rally!

Lastly, if your garbled, flawed and non-cogent posts here make you feel better at what happened...sleep on.

THE END!

[c love]

@Derek...your comments SHOCK me, considering your history at ZNS - not to mention the many comments you've shared with me personally and on social media.

HMMMMM...one man's rude is another man's REALITY CHECK!

PS... I only give venom where venom is due, LOL. I am a mouthpiece for ME! Don't mix me up with those other hosts who sing for their supper. My disdain for politicians (which I always demonstrated on IR) cuts both ways! Love & prayers... since it's YOU!

[c love]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=Qw3Z8Oa7E3Y

[kevin evans]

your column on ZNS was both educational and timely. I agree with your conclusions on Chrissy Love and Steve McKinney. ZNS, it seems, will always be a financial albatross around the collective necks of the Bahamian taxpayers. Thank you!

[coakleysd]

@clove...

No reality check needed Ms. Love. Your response proved my point exactly. You are a NEWS, OPINION, TALK & ENTERTAINMENT HOST. Which means you facilitate conversation, opinions, and commentary from your guests. If your GUESTS are politaically slanted, so be it. You, MS. HOST OF A PUBLIC SHOW represent ALL Bahamains no matter what political bend. Respect the taxpayer and HOST contrary opinions not spew the airwaves with your own.
As in your response above and like others have said you try to talk down as though you need to define for me what NEWS, OPINION, TALK & ENTERTAINMENT is. That definition if you are as intelligent as you think are, can be interpretted by the listner however they want to. YOU Ms Love do not hold a patent on what is deemed proper delivery and facilitation of NEWS, OPINION, TALK & ENTERTAINMENT. HOST it and keep your opinions to yourself. We have enough desenting opinions out there to entertain us. We don't need your disrespectful brand as well. Educated my ...

[c love]

@Coakleysd...again, you have proven your MISunderstanding of the ZNS situation, as well as your apparent MISeducation of how this business is PROPERLY run.

Additionally, it is clear that there is a pathology here - low self-esteem issues (i.e. talk down to), which are evident in your tone (eg: "spew the airwaves" - what's THAT?).

Many love my brand, as my career clearly illustrates. Some don't. And stay tuned, there will be many more REALITY CHECKS for you and others.

www.chrissyloveraw.com

...there are none so blind as those who refuse to see...