Cherisse Moe

State-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) has sent a lawyer's let­ter to Gayelle The Chan­nel for what it says is its il­le­gal broad­cast­ing of the pa­rade of the bands on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

CN­MG re­port­ed­ly held the ex­clu­sive rights to pro­vide cov­er­age for the Car­ni­val events and had made that po­si­tion clear on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions on its sta­tion. Ef­forts to con­tact Er­rol Fa­bi­en, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and co-founder of Gayelle, for a com­ment proved fu­tile yes­ter­day. A vis­i­bly irate Fa­bi­en voiced his opin­ion on the sit­u­a­tion via a video clip­ping, ti­tled Long Live Gayelle, on the so­cial Web site Face­book. Ac­cus­ing CN­MG of "jump­ing on the band­wag­on for Car­ni­val," Fa­bi­en said he re­ceived a let­ter yes­ter­day from CN­MG or­der­ing Gayelle to stop its cov­er­age of Car­ni­val as it was in­fring­ing on the rights of the sta­tion. Fa­bi­en, who de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as "sad," said he did not have the re­sources to fight the sta­tion in court and had no choice but to stop the cov­er­age.

He said he was left in a state of "shock and anger" over the is­sue, as Gayelle was all about pro­mot­ing lo­cal cul­ture. Fa­bi­en said tak­ing the de­ci­sion to broad­cast the Pa­rade of the Bands was sim­ply in keep­ing with its tra­di­tion of show­cas­ing the art­form to the peo­ple. "Gayelle is not a TV sta­tion. Gayelle is a sense of T&T... It's a pa­tri­o­tism," he said. "CN­MG, who (sic) does noth­ing lo­cal all year long, wants to turn off Gayelle cam­eras for Car­ni­val 2010? They want us to car­ry some­thing else than what we car­ry every day. Every day we car­ry T&T's cul­ture!"

Scores of Gayelle fans sub­se­quent­ly pledged their sup­port for Fa­bi­en and Gayelle un­der the Face­book video clip. Up to news time, there were more than 50 com­ments un­der the video clip, all slam­ming the ac­tions of CN­MG. Mar­lon Ra­dio Po­lice wrote: "They want to con­tin­ue to shove the for­eign con­tent down our damn throats. But it's your own that does this to you, and for two days, they sud­den­ly be­lieve that they could make up for the oth­er 363 of an­oth­er man's cul­ture. Keep on keep­ing Un­cle Er­rol, one day, one day, Con­go Tay." Leslie Ann Wills said, "We are all on your side, Er­rol!" Mean­while, Blade Day­walk­er wrote, "Come on, peo­ple!!! Let­ting Gayelle die is killing our cul­ture, our iden­ti­ty, our in­de­pen­dence!! If I have to, I will go door to door!!! We have be­come a peo­ple blind­ed by the hue of mon­ey."