Sat Ma­haraj

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Inc of T&T had to take the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don in or­der to bring the PNM Gov­ern­ment to jus­tice for dis­crim­i­nat­ing against the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty. The Ma­ha Sab­ha had to go through the process of ap­pli­ca­tion, re­view and even­tu­al­ly re­ceived ap­proval by the state agency to es­tab­lish a Hin­du ra­dio sta­tion. The Ma­ha Sab­ha on­ly pro­ceed­ed with lit­i­ga­tion when our ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion was by­passed overnight in favour of a PNM par­ty hack, now May­or of Port-of-Spain, Louis Lee Sing. With­in the ap­pli­ca­tion process, ap­pli­cants had to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on a num­ber of ar­eas in­clud­ing back­ground on the di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny, abil­i­ty to fi­nance the op­er­a­tions, back­ground qual­i­fi­ca­tions on key per­son­nel, tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion and much more. All ap­pli­cants must sub­ject them­selves to this in­tense ap­pli­ca­tion scruti­ny be­fore they are put in a queue to be con­sid­ered for a broad­cast fre­quen­cy. When a broad­cast fre­quen­cy is fi­nal­ly ap­proved to the ap­pli­cant, clear terms and con­di­tions are giv­en as part of the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments.

The li­cence for broad­cast­ing a sta­tion is­sued by the Tele-com­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) states that "the li­censee is here­by au­tho­rised, but sub­ject to the con­di­tions con­tained in the li­cence, to, in­ter alia, in­stall, op­er­ate and to use the ra­dio trans­mit­ting equip­ment iden­ti­fied in sched­ule A of the li­cence. Sec­tion B of this doc­u­ment out­lines the gen­er­al con­di­tions." It con­tin­ues: "The li­cencee shall not with­out the pri­or writ­ten ap­proval of the au­thor­i­ty, such ap­proval not to be un­rea­son­ably with­held, en­ter in­to any joint ven­ture, man­age­ment agree­ment, out­sourc­ing agree­ment, as­so­ci­a­tion con­tract or oth­er arrange­ment with a third par­ty, the ef­fect? or pur­port­ed ef­fect of which would be to per­mit a per­son who is not au­tho­rised un­der this li­cence or any oth­er grant­ed un­der the Act to ob­tain rights or priv­i­leges un­der this li­cence, or which would oth­er­wise re­sult in a breach of Con­di­tion 20." This con­di­tion states that "the li­censee shall not with­out pri­or writ­ten ap­proval of the au­thor­i­ty, such ap­proval not be un­rea­son­ably with­held, trans­fer, as­sign or oth­er­wise part with this li­cence or any per­mis­sion, right or oblig­a­tion or ben­e­fit grant­ed un­der this li­cence."

How­ev­er, what is reg­u­lar­ly hap­pen­ing un­der the nose of TATT is that peo­ple with mon­ey and in­flu­ence are ob­tain­ing ra­dio fre­quen­cies from oth­ers, us­ing cre­ative ways to cir­cum­vent the law with­out the req­ui­site ap­provals from the TATT. The Ma­ha Sab­ha has ob­tained in­for­ma­tion via in­ves­ti­ga­tions that no au­thor­i­ty has been giv­en to any me­dia house to en­ter in­to any man­age­ment arrange­ment and that no au­thor­i­ty has been giv­en to any me­dia house to en­ter in­to any man­age­ment or trans­fer of their broad­cast fre­quen­cy. It does ap­pear that peo­ple, with­out go­ing through any ap­pli­ca­tion ap­proval, ob­tained the use of a broad­cast fre­quen­cy from some­one who al­ready went through the process. Iron­i­cal­ly, TATT is aware of this breach, yet choos­es to turn a blind eye and there­by al­low the law to be bro­ken at will.

Many peo­ple who orig­i­nal­ly ap­plied for a broad­cast fre­quen­cy found that their ex­pec­ta­tion of start-up and op­er­a­tion is fac­ing a me­dia in­dus­try in which it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to sur­vive. A sim­ple ra­dio sta­tion re­quires a min­i­mum in­come stream of no less than a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars a month to sur­vive in the most com­pet­i­tive area of me­dia.

Many sta­tions have failed be­cause of fail­ure to ad­just to the com­pet­i­tive na­ture of the in­dus­try. While oth­er sta­tions have flopped and floun­dered in ar­eas they choose, the In­di­an niche with­in the ra­dio in­dus­try re­mains the most com­pet­i­tive with eight ra­dio sta­tions that are In­di­an for­mat­ted. Yet each In­di­an for­mat­ted ra­dio sta­tion has sur­vived and even grown. Most re­cent­ly, VL Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd (News­day Busi­ness Day, 19/08/10), re­spon­si­ble for the Ra­dio Trin­ba­go 94.7 FM with a so­ca and ca­lyp­so for­mat, ad­mit­ted that there was no in­ter­est by both au­di­ence and ad­ver­tis­ers in the for­mat. This fol­lows sim­i­lar ex­pres­sions by TBC 105 FM and Su­pe­ri­or Ra­dio 94.1 FM who both had a for­mat of so­ca and ca­lyp­so. VL Com­mu­ni­ca­tions adopts es­sen­tial­ly an Amer­i­can for­mat when it hand­ed over 49 per cent of its shares to TT Ra­dio Net­work.

This net­work al­so owns WE 96.1 FM and 107.7 FM which is owned by Mar­cel Ma­habir but, like VL, has an "arrange­ment" with TT Ra­dio Net­work. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Lee Sing, who ob­tained a ra­dio sta­tion fre­quen­cy in 48 hours with­out lin­ing up like the rest of the ap­pli­cants even be­fore his com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished, is now al­so in con­trol of two oth­er ra­dio sta­tions, Hitz 107.1 FM and Red 96.7 FM. The for­mer sta­tion, 107.1 FM, is reg­is­tered to In­nerci­ty Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd of 43 Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James, while 96.7 FM is reg­is­tered to Q Cor­po­ra­tion of 20 Rust Street, St Clair. Why is TATT con­tin­u­ing to al­low peo­ple who have nev­er ap­plied for an ad­di­tion­al broad­cast fre­quen­cy to sim­ply ob­tain the com­mer­cial use of one by oth­er means?

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha