Im­pos­si­bly–one would have thought–a ne­go­ti­a­tions im­passe arose last week, just a fort­night be­fore Car­ni­val, that was so daunt­ing that it led to a fail­ure to tele­vise or pro­fes­sion­al­ly record the first ma­jor steel­band com­pe­ti­tions of the 2013 sea­son.

This is a mat­ter that speaks not on­ly to the un­sat­is­fac­to­ry state of rights ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing the fes­ti­val, but al­so to a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of the chal­lenges fac­ing this coun­try's most vis­i­ble tourism prod­uct. It won't mat­ter how great a Car­ni­val we think we have if it isn't record­ed, broad­cast and made avail­able for view­ing in the wider world.

Even the most op­ti­mistic fan of T&T Car­ni­val must ac­knowl­edge that there's no short­age of com­pe­ti­tion among glob­al des­ti­na­tions for tourists seek­ing an en­ter­tain­ing event.

Last week's de­ba­cle found state-owned me­dia house CN­MG and Pan Trin­ba­go, af­ter months of ne­go­ti­a­tions and dis­cus­sion, un­able to ar­rive at an ac­com­mo­da­tion that at least al­lowed record­ing to be done over a week­end that found the na­tion's best play­ers per­form­ing at the mec­ca of the steel­band, the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

A sin­gu­lar event is now lost for­ev­er. It was a mo­ment that should leave all par­ties in­volved in the mat­ter shamed by their in­abil­i­ty to rise to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that they all shared to record, for pos­ter­i­ty, per­for­mances by mu­si­cians the coun­try claims to re­spect and love but is will­ing to aban­don for the sake of point­less ar­gu­ment.

Pan Trin­ba­go is not alone in this scrap­py sit­u­a­tion. TU­CO and the NC­BA have al­so been un­able to suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­ate with CN­MG, and the mat­ter has now em­broiled the NCC and the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

CN­MG has tak­en the po­si­tion that it is ex­pect­ed to make a prof­it and can­not of­fer more for the rights to broad­cast Car­ni­val than it has put on the ta­ble, a sum re­port­ed to be $600,000 to be split among the three in­ter­est groups. The state me­dia group has al­so claimed that broad­cast costs will add an­oth­er mil­lion to its bill and there is in­suf­fi­cient com­mer­cial re­turn on the broad­cast.

That po­si­tion calls in­to ques­tion the cur­rent role of CN­MG as a state en­ter­prise and the con­stant­ly shift­ing im­per­a­tives it must an­swer, which pull it be­tween pro­vid­ing im­por­tant ser­vices and mak­ing mon­ey. That's a mat­ter for the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress and de­cide on.

It's hard­ly fair to oth­er com­pet­ing me­dia hous­es for the state me­dia en­ter­prise to have spe­cial con­di­tions for CN­MG's op­er­a­tions, but it al­so isn't fair to the com­pa­ny con­stant­ly to have the goal­posts of its fi­nan­cial mis­sion shift­ed by po­lit­i­cal whim­sy.

Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers, who have been quite keen to squeeze every po­ten­tial source of me­dia rev­enue, must al­so un­der­stand that grow­ing the fes­ti­val will de­mand they in­vest more to im­prove and en­cour­age more ad­van­taged and crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant ac­cess to lo­cal me­dia hous­es and doc­u­men­tar­i­ans keen to am­pli­fy the coun­try's cre­ative out­put.

TU­CO has made some small moves in this di­rec­tion by work­ing to broad­en ac­cess to Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, but the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­mains need­less­ly dis­or­gan­ised and vul­gar and an em­bar­rass­ment to T&T.