Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Al­li­son De­mas last night said the Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) will be broad­cast­ing this year's ma­jor Car­ni­val events. In a state­ment, De­mas said CN­MG had been grant­ed ex­clu­sive rights for TV broad­cast of ma­jor Car­ni­val events and non ex­clu­sive stream­ing rights, fol­low­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Lin­coln Dou­glas and Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ja­mal Mo­hammed.

Speak­ing about the min­is­ters' in­put in the ne­go­ti­a­tions, De­mas said: "It's great to have a Min­is­ter who sup­ports and un­der­stands the needs of the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty and a Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions who re­spects the so­cial, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic im­por­tance of Car­ni­val."

Ear­li­er in the day, De­mas was hope­ful of reach­ing a quick agree­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of an im­passe be­tween CN­MG and Pan Trin­ba­go which re­sult­ed in a black­out of Sun­day's na­tion­al Panora­ma semi­fi­nal. "We are work­ing to­wards a res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue re­gard­ing broad­cast rights for Car­ni­val 2013. It's a bal­anc­ing act be­tween up­hold­ing the val­ue of the Car­ni­val prod­uct and pro­vid­ing pub­lic ac­cess via broad­cast and In­ter­net," she said.

"It is im­por­tant that state broad­cast­ers re­spect the val­ue of the cre­ative prod­uct and that Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers ap­pre­ci­ate the State's in­vest­ment in Car­ni­val." CN­MG has tra­di­tion­al­ly tele­vised Car­ni­val events, but a break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Pan Trin­ba­go had re­sult­ed in the state-owned me­dia house be­ing de­nied broad­cast rights to the Panora­ma semis.

CN­MG chair­man Ken Ali had said they were keen to reach a res­o­lu­tion so they could pro­vide cov­er­age to the pub­lic. He said it would cost CN­MG about $1 mil­lion to broad­cast the main Car­ni­val events, with lit­tle hope of com­mer­cial re­turns.

Car­ni­val TV's Paul Charles, in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, mean­while said his com­pa­ny had ob­tained the rights to stream con­tent for the So­ca Monarch and Panora­ma fi­nals on the In­ter­net.