Announcements in Berbice — obituaries, tributes and congratulations on air

In Guyana, the announcement is a genuine public institution. A death announcement on the radio still reaches people that no other medium reaches — the neighbour without a smartphone, the relative in a village down the coast, the family friend who has the station on all day.

If you have never had to arrange one, it happens at a moment when nobody wants to be learning a process. This guide sets out what to send, so that a phone call at a difficult time takes five minutes instead of forty.

The kinds of announcement

Death announcement. The core service: the name, the details, the funeral arrangements. Broadcast on television and read on radio, repeated over several days.

Memorial or tribute. For an anniversary of a death, or a fuller remembrance — often with photographs, and sometimes as a produced slideshow with music.

Congratulations. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, new arrivals, promotions. Usually with a photograph, on television for a few days.

Thanks. After a funeral, families frequently place an announcement thanking those who helped. It is a normal and expected part of the sequence.

Job vacancy. Broadcast mentions plus a listing on the news website and in the newsletter.

Tender or legal notice. A fixed-period notice on the website, a television text rotation and a newsletter placement — the formal route when something has to be publicly advertised for a set number of weeks.

Church, school and community notices. Services, meetings, fundraisers, sports events.

What to send for a death announcement

Write this out and send it in one message. Every item below is one that a station has to telephone back for when it is missing.

1. Full name of the deceased, including the name they were commonly known by. Write it exactly as it should be read. If the pronunciation is not obvious, spell it phonetically in brackets.
2. Age, and date of death.
3. Where they lived — village or street, and town.
4. Surviving relatives, in the order the family wants them read: spouse, children, parents, siblings, grandchildren, and others. This is the longest part and the part families most often want to revise, so agree it among yourselves before sending it.
5. Funeral arrangements — date, time, the church or place of service, and where the interment or cremation will be.
6. Viewing arrangements, if any, with the funeral home and the times.
7. A photograph, if you want one on television. A clear, front-facing picture. Send the original file rather than a screenshot of a screenshot.
8. A contact name and number for the family, in case anything needs checking.
9. How many days you want it to run.

Send it by WhatsApp to +592 741-4911, or telephone 592-333-4758, 592-333-3758 or 592-333-4445. Email works too: littlerocktelevision@yahoo.com or 88.5rockfm@gmail.com.

Send the text as text, not as a photograph of handwriting. It removes the single largest source of error — a name misread and then broadcast.

What to send for a congratulations

Much shorter:

• Who it is for, and their full name
• The occasion, and the date
• Who it is from — the family, an individual, a business
• One clear photograph
• How many days you want it to run

What to send for a vacancy or a notice

• The exact wording, as you want it published, including any legally required text
• The closing date
• Where applications or responses go — address, email or telephone
• Your organisation’s name as it should appear
• How long the notice must run

For a legal notice, check the statutory period yourself before booking. The station will run it for whatever period you specify; it is not the station’s job to know how long your particular notice is required to run.

Timing

Death announcements are urgent by nature and are treated that way, but there is still a practical deadline. To air on television the same evening, get the details to the station in the morning. For radio, sooner is better — the reading blocks run through the day.

Congratulations and other announcements should reach the station at least a day ahead, and more if a photograph or a slideshow is involved.

A produced tribute — a video or photograph slideshow set to music — needs longer. Allow several days, and send the photographs all at once rather than in batches as relatives find them.

What it costs and how to pay

Announcements are charged at flat rates rather than by the second, and the rate depends on the type, the number of days and whether a photograph or a produced slideshow is included. Ask for the current figure when you book.

Payment is by mobile money (MMG), bank transfer, Zelle, PayPal, or cash at the station in New Amsterdam. The details are on the Advertise With Us page. Confirm the booking is recorded before the day you want it to run.

Where an announcement reaches

Booked through Little Rock, an announcement can run across:

• Television — Channel 10 in New Amsterdam and Channel 16 on the Corentyne
• Radio — 88.5 Rock FM, read on air during live shows
• Online — a notice on lrtvsnewswatch.com
• The newsletter — The Little Rock Press, on Fridays

For a family with relatives abroad, the online notice matters as much as the broadcast one: it is the version that can be shared to a WhatsApp group in New York or Toronto within a minute of being published.

A short note on tone

Stations read these carefully, and they read them the way the family wrote them. If there is a phrase your family always uses, include it. If there is a relationship you would rather not have listed, leave it out — nobody will add it.

And if you are arranging this for someone you have just lost: send what you have. The station will telephone you for the rest. You do not have to get it perfect in one message.

To arrange an announcement: WhatsApp +592 741-4911, or call 592-333-4758. Every station number is on the Contact Us page.