Where is the audience? Production assistant: “The bus driver says nobody was there”. Where is the fourth speaker? Producer: “Well, she cancelled yesterday”. Where is your camera? Cameraman: “..it will be here soon”. But we start recording in 5 minutes!

It was a bumpy ride, but DVB Debate is born - yesterday we recorded the first episode. With half the audience, but with enough cameras, lights and microphones. Producing a TV program is never easy, but in Burma it is a real challenge. The fact a program is made in Yangon in which everybody can share their critical opinion about political issues, was impossible to think of until recently.

Up to now the main challenge have been the technical requirements and editorial training. Like I described before, daily work is constantly frustrated by lack of electricity, phone and internet connections. I did not realize it was going to be this bad, when I wrote the project proposal last March, in the Netherlands. Two months later USAID granted the proposal, so we moved to Burma.

Independent broadcaster DVB (formally known as the Democratic Voice of Burma) has over 15 years of experience with making news, but in exile and in secret. Making a weekly debate show, in a studio, with speakers and audience, out in the open in Yangon, is very new for DVB. It requires guts and a new way of journalistic thinking, with much more preparation and organization required than producing daily short news items.

Cameras, batteries, wireless microphones, cables, plugs, studio lamps, chairs and tables - none of these are easy to find in Yangon. Or not at all. The lamps were shipped from the former DVB studio in Oslo. One camera I bought in Bangkok. We picked up the chairs in the harbor yesterday and all the different plugs and cables we found in tiny shops all over town, until minutes before the recording.

The technical team (3 cameramen, 1 light expert, 1 audio engineer and a camera director) was also only assembled the day before. Several freelance technicians agreed to work on the show, but never showed up - or did, but without a camera. Luckily experienced guys from the DVB News crew in Yangon decided to give up their free Saturday and bring their best cameras to record it.

Technically the show is standing, three invited speakers are on time, just like the cartoonist that creates a artistic impression during the debate (see below). The first episode is on educational reform, with fierce criticism on the regime: 20% of the national budget is allocated for the army, only 4% for education. How to reform without money? One speaker, chairman of the local student union, calls for action. It was the ‘pilot’ episode though, but it went so well, it could be aired.

Next week it will be on air for the first time, on a seemingly less political topic: beetle nut. Let’s see how the regime is going to react to the first open debate show. You can see that too, by following us at facebook.com/dvb.debate (soon dvbdebate.com is online too).

The army sits on 20% of the national budget, the student gets only 4% - 1st cartoon made during the debate.