Shir­van Williams

Mil­lions of peo­ple around the world will soon have ac­cess to the unique cul­ture of T&T and the Caribbean on any me­dia plat­form they choose through a new chan­nel called MAS2 TV.

View­ers will be able to use the first Over the Top (OTT) TV ser­vice strict­ly ded­i­cat­ed to Caribbean con­tent, through an In­ter­net-based plat­form which will fea­ture live pro­gram­ming as well as on de­mand pro­gram­ming.

MAS2 TV which was launched on Thurs­day at Aria Lounge on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, will show­case Caribbean movies, cook­ing, doc­u­men­taries, docu-se­ries, com­e­dy, fash­ion shows, award shows, sports and cul­tur­al events such as Car­ni­val.

The new plat­form will be of­fered on a free de­mo ba­sis un­til March 1 on the chan­nel's mo­bile Web site.

The chan­nel will be fea­tured on con­nect­ed TV de­vices Roku play­ers and Roku TVTM, as well as via apps on iOS 8 and An­droid de­vices. All con­tent will be avail­able 24 hours a day. There are al­so plans be­fore the end of the year to make MAS2 TV avail­able on gam­ing con­soles such as Sony Play Sta­tion and XBox. The plat­form works like Net­flix or Hu­lu in the US.

Di­anne Bis­soon, the ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent and chief cre­ative of­fi­cer of Mas2 TV In­ter­na­tion­al, who was born in Trinidad but grew up in the Unit­ed States, ded­i­cat­ed the launch to her 85-year-old moth­er Dol­ly Heeras­ingh, who she said was the biggest fan of tele­vi­sion that she knew. Heeras­ingh was present at the launch.

"We want to be re­al­ly clear that MAS2 TV is not just syn­ony­mous with Car­ni­val. It (MAS2 TV) ac­tu­al­ly stands for the gen­res of pro­gram­ming, which is Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Arts, Sports and So­ci­ety. This means things like Caribbean movies, doc­u­men­taries, award shows cook­ing shows and the arts. We want­ed to launch to­day be­cause we recog­nise that Trinidad is home to the largest fes­ti­val in the re­gion."

Bis­soon added that she was hap­py to be able to pro­vide a plat­form for lo­cal artistes and per­form­ers to show­case their tal­ents. She said MAS2 TV was al­ready speak­ing to the T&T Film Com­pa­ny about hav­ing lo­cal film con­tent on the chan­nel.

She said the idea for the chan­nel came about in T&T af­ter last year's Car­ni­val and she feels it is the per­fect plat­form for every­body to share Caribbean con­tent.

A mass call has al­ready been is­sued for lo­cal pro­duc­ers and they have al­ready re­ceived ma­te­r­i­al from St Lu­cia and few oth­er Caribbean is­lands, she con­tin­ued.

Paul Hamm of En­da­vo Me­dia who is the plat­form op­er­a­tor for the chan­nel, said tele­vi­sion view­ing was chang­ing around the world and this chan­nel would be the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Caribbean to cap­i­talise on that chang­ing mar­ket.

"What we are do­ing is open­ing the door. Peo­ple's eye­balls are there now and if we can suc­cess­ful­ly pull to­geth­er the tal­ent and con­tent an Over the Top would be the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty as a mar­ket. Giv­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty to the Caribbean is a tru­ly ex­cit­ing thing."