JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Pointless rights wrangle

by

20130130

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored