Geisha Kow­lessar

Trinida­di­ans and oth­er fans of Car­ni­val liv­ing abroad may be fac­ing a black­out af­ter the ten­der­ing process for the tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion rights to stream a dozen Car­ni­val shows and mas on­line were quashed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC).The de­ci­sion means while Car­ni­val can still be streamed on­line, the video may not be pro­fes­sion­al­ly pro­duced to a high stan­dard as orig­i­nal­ly planned. Fur­ther, the pro­fes­sion­al com­pa­nies pre­vi­ous­ly in­ter­est­ed in do­ing so may not, mean­ing there may be no prop­er stream­ing of shows and mas dur­ing the sea­son.NCC chair Al­li­son De­mas yes­ter­day con­firmed the move, adding on­ly that the de­ci­sion was made on "le­gal grounds."In a brief in­ter­view, De­mas said: "There were two ten­der­ing process­es, one for broad­cast rights and one for the tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion rights. That one (tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion rights) has been with­drawn on le­gal grounds and let­ters were sent to the var­i­ous me­dia hous­es."

But pro­duc­er, di­rec­tor and writer Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller de­scribed the move as back­ward and one which could re­sult in a poor qual­i­ty prod­uct be­ing put out from en­ti­ties or in­di­vid­u­als who may still de­cide to stream events.Bids closed on No­vem­ber 6 last year and the com­pa­nies that ten­dered were Ad­vance Dy­nam­ics, Vis­trac Ltd and Cedar House, Di­ef­fen­thaller's com­pa­ny. The T&T Guardian was told, how­ev­er, that an­oth­er com­pa­ny, which did not bid, would have been award­ed the con­tract. De­mas de­nied that.Di­ef­fen­thaller said she met an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee in late Jan­u­ary and was asked to sup­ply ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing the num­ber of crew mem­bers. But the en­tire process, she added, was a waste of time.She said the NCC should have had the cour­tesy to in­form pro­duc­tion hous­es much ear­li­er that the ten­der­ing process would be null and void. She was told of the de­ci­sion to can­cel the process in a let­ter sent to her on Feb­ru­ary 6.

On what that meant for this year's Car­ni­val, Di­ef­fen­thaller said: "Car­ni­val will still be streamed, for ex­am­ple, via CN­MG."But the NCC want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent to show­case our Car­ni­val.

Those who bid would have done the pro­duc­tion, then they (NCC) would have tak­en it and streamed it to who­ev­er they want."Since the en­tire thing has been can­celled what it means is that any­one with a cam­era who has a stream can stream it on the in­ter­net but what qual­i­ty would the world be see­ing and how would our Car­ni­val be por­trayed?"She said the ask­ing price for the bids was "$6 mil­lion and un­der," which she added was a drop in the buck­et.Urg­ing the NCC to im­ple­ment bet­ter guide­lines for next year, Di­ef­fen­thaller added: "This was re­al­ly not good plan­ning, to say the least. An im­por­tant part of the whole process is the broad­cast which you are sell­ing."I have peo­ple on stand­by but it's a good thing most of my peo­ple are free­lancers."Ef­forts to con­tact CN­MG CEO Ken Ali yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.

NCC's can­cel­la­tion let­ter

The T&T Guardian ob­tained a copy of the let­ter sent to bid­ders on be­half of the NCC by at­tor­ney Dhar­men­dra Pun­wasee of Vic­to­ria Cham­bers, 24 Vic­to­ria Square West, Port-of-Spain.It read: "My in­struc­tions are that the NCC is­sued a re­quest for the pro­pos­al for the tele­vi­sion broad­cast rights for 12 of the main events for the Car­ni­val 2014 sea­son. Sub­se­quent to the said re­quest the NCC re­ceived a num­ber of bids in­clud­ing one from your com­pa­ny."The sub­mit­ted bids were eval­u­at­ed and sub­se­quent­ly the NCC's board was pro­vid­ed with an as­sess­ment of the bids, in­clud­ing the price ten­dered by each bid­der," the let­ter said.

It added that ow­ing to "ten­der prices and ad­just­ed ten­der prices be­ing so un­ex­pect­ed­ly el­e­vat­ed" and on the ba­sis of ex­pert ad­vice giv­en to the board, the NCC had re­solved not to pur­sue the project con­tem­plat­ed in pro­pos­als."The board wish­es to thank you for your in­ter­est and will take steps in the fu­ture to re­fine the terms of the re­quest for pro­pos­als in an ef­fort to reg­u­late the fi­nan­cial bur­den and man­age the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges en­coun­tered this year."