-$1M lawsuit filed against station

Local television station, WRHM Channel 7 and regional broadcast giant, Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) yesterday secured an injunction in the High Court here blocking the National Communications Network (NCN) from broadcasting the current Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

The state-run station began airing the Olympics on Monday and continued yesterday. However, officials at the station said that the broadcast was only for a short period. CMC and WRHM have also filed a law suit against the state-owned television network seeking in excess of $1M in damages for what they deemed as the unlawful and willful interference of their property, copyright, contractual, constitutional and common-law rights acquired from NBC Universal and sold to WRHM for exclusive purpose. The injunction was granted by Justice, James Bovell-Drakes. In the court documents filed by Senior Counsel Rex Mc kay on behalf of WRHM and CMC, it was noted that CMC is the sole legal authority by US-based NBC to broadcast the games in English in the Caribbean. Guyana Times was told that after acquiring the rights, CMC offered the signal to several television networks in the Caribbean, including NCN. However, only WRHM took up the offer. This newspaper was told that at the time when NCN was approached, its principals said that the television station was busy preparing for the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) and it could not handle the Olympics. According to reports, several other local television stations, including those based in Berbice, were also approached by WRHM to jointly air the Games, but they too turned down the offer, citing financial constraints. Programme Manager of NCN, Martin Goolsarran, said the main reason the station broadcast the games was for the people of Essequibo, Linden and Berbice to have a glimpse of this spectacular event which takes place once every four years. He said that they had been receiving a number of calls from residents of the outlying regions who only access NCN since the other television stations do not have signal extending there. We really wanted the people in Guyana to see it since WHRM have a limited coverage and they would not reach such areas.we discontinued the broadcast as soon as we got the call from CMC, Goolsarran commented. WRHM is said to have paid US$60,000 to broadcast the Games.