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CNMG moves against Gayelle over Carnival rights
Published: 17 Feb 2010
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.”
CNMG saw an opportunity to
CNMG saw an opportunity to make money and they went for it...for the last two years or so they were showing it for free...they saw all the thousands of people throught out the world logging on to the internet, got greedy and decided it was their chance to make millions...
once again it's always big schemeing going on in Trinidad and Tobago...good old cronyism and corruption
if you want to make a change donate to Gayelle TV (i have) and make them stronger than before...they are the people's TV station..
The following was extracted
The following was extracted from the blog: http://www.southtrini.com/blog2/?p=492
To those of you who tried unsuccessfully to view major events for this year’s carnival season via “TRINITV.NET”, we wish to state that TRINITV.NET was not responsible for streaming the 2010 carnival events. This was done by CNMG through their website “CTNTWORLD.COM”.
Trinitv simply provided access to their stream for those of our customers who were already familiar with our site.
In past times we, along with a partner website, implemented a small charge for viewing specific events, however, CTNTWORLD.COM came into being, spending government money, decided to stream the same events for free, forcing us out of the live streaming business for carnival. Now that we are out of it because we cannot match their uncapped capital, this year, they implemented a charge for specific events; a plan similar to what we implemented years ago, the only difference is that we charged much less.
Their plan backfired, since they were misled about the capacity of their servers. Some people who paid to view the events were unable to logon because their servers were not able to authenticate the traffic, thereby prompting demands for refund.
CNMG has challenged Gayelle TV over rights for the parade of the bands broadcast. Gayelle has been promoting our culture since inception while CNMG as a government owned station has been broadcasting less than fifty percent local content. Given this scenario, it will seem that CNMG’s management has no qualms about trampling on smaller businesses with less capital though they are paid by the taxpayers of this country.
I hope that they continue to promote Trinidad & Tobago Culture to the world after Carnival.
I hope the relevant government minister looks into this issue as a form of abuse office.
Every single year Gayelle
Every single year Gayelle goes out among the crowd with hand held cameras and gets into the pulse of the street. They've done it since they started. They're now being threatened with legal action for doing what they always have.
What is very vague, and was sought to be clarified several times by media outlets is what coverage exactly CNMG had exclusive rights to cover. It was stated by Minister Parsanlal that CNMG had LIVE COVERAGE rights and that other stations could cover as part of their news etc.
Well as far as I know, Gayelle's coverage wasn't LIVE, and Minister Parsanlal cannot dictate the format of a stations broadcast. He cant say what format a news show can take. Gayelle's coverage could be considered no different to extended news coverage during elections. And commendable that they continue to hold our culture in such high esteem that they commit to it all year round.
The issue that I continue to
The issue that I continue to see here is the fact that even if CNMG had the "exclusive rights" to broadcast the shows and Parade of the Bands on the two days of Carnival, their product was defective. People paid US$80 for a four package deal to see these shows via the internet. And what did they get for their money?
That to me, is the major point of contention, rather than about Gayelle and whoever else should have broadcast rights. The people who had the rights failed miserably in their delivery of the product. And so far, I have not heard anyone from CNMG apologise or say anything about refunds to their customers. Again, I support the idea that "government" should not be in certain arenas. And this TV business is one of them that is best left to the private sector.
As far as I can recall, both
As far as I can recall, both local and foreign journalists had to pay for carnival and panorama rights to record the events.
While nothing has really changed, I suspect that Gayelle tried a thing and got caught.
But what do I really know?
http://dsaltsman.blogspot.com/
There were people on the
There were people on the stage filming and photographing the usuall individual payments were made for that I am sure. But CNMG had the sole rights (which they paid for)and they should have accommodated the other stations. They did not do a good job. Their main outsside person especially at the calypso fiesta was a disaster. Thank God for Tigress
The right to re-broadcast
The right to re-broadcast Live coverage of events at the stage I think is what was paid for.
The question that will come out in court is: Can the government grant ANYONE exclusive rights to broadcasting a public event and state of mind?
If I am on Tragarete Road in the middle of a band playing mas, deciding to stream that experience worldwide via my iPhone is that a breach of license? It's Live and during the Parade... Is it that all coverage of anything related to bands on Carnival is covered by those exclusive rights?
These are all considerations that will be very controversial and are now in the hands of lawyers. I for one will b waiting patiently to see the outcome.
ban-d-wagonist first off you
ban-d-wagonist
first off you are already in breach of another licence.. as your iPhone isnt officially supported in T&T.. Jailbroken?
Charge on, CNMG ! Gayelle is
Charge on, CNMG !
Gayelle is as much a TV station as TV6 or CNC3. They all raise revenue by charging for advertising space. Their decision to show 'local culture' is not a developmental or spiritual thing but a business strategy. The state spends millions on carnival. The way that the benefactors of the government largesse moan and complain over the inadequacy of their handouts and 'only getting the same thing that they got in previous years' suggests that even the public is not willing to pay the cost of covering these events out of their own private funds - so in many cases there is something wrong with the formula. For example, if there are not enough patrons who are willing to buy tickets (at prices required to cover the cost) of a soca competition, then why should I get a salary deduction (income tax) to help pay for it (subvention). One may argue that the soca comPetition is a small part of a big picture - national culture, exports, national pride etc. But when I see that the government has to be everywhere contributing state funds to virtually every aspect of the event, then something is wrong with the formula. Back to the Gayelle issue, CNMG is a state owned station. The parade of the bands is an opportunity for CNMG to earn revenue. Other TV stations choose to show the parade and pay for this right from the resulting advertising dollars. If CNMG does not charge for these rights, then my tax dollar has to go into financing their deficit. I would rather have Gayelle's advertising pay for showing the parade. Finally, one may ask 'what gives CNMG the right to charge?'. The answer is the same state that pays everyone millions for having shows at carnival. I say - Charge on CNMG!
hb, CNMG had the rights, but
hb, CNMG had the rights, but what did they do with it? When their websites crashed and customers - paying customers - failed to get what they paid for, who benefitted? Did the advertisers get what they paid for? Their products weren't seen!
Btw, I didn't see a great variety of companies advertising on CNMG's broadcasts for Parade of the Bands - it seemed to be mostly for Beyonce and the World Laugh Festival - so even the advertisers seemed to think CNMG wasn't a worthy vehicle for their products, despite their exclusivity.
If CNMG shared the load with other providers with established distribution channels, e.g. Gayelle with its TV channel and website, then there would've been more opportunities for advertisers to bite. As a result of their exclusivity, they made their fellow media houses competitors instead of partners. Their greed caused shame to themselves, since it highlighted their incompetence, and it resulted in a loss to T&T, including taxpayers. How? By not being able to show Carnival to my non-T&T friends, I've lost a major means to encourage them to visit T&T and spend their wealth. If we get more tourism dollars, it lessens the need for tax revenue, which would've allowed government to lessen the tax burdens on citizens like yourself in the future.
As it is, because of this fiasco, advertisers won't invest in Carnival because even though CNMG made themselves the only vehicle between the product and the Carnival market, their crashed. And non-T&T tourists would take their money elsewhere to the other Carnivals managed by folks who understand successful market.
Heck, at the very least, the CNMG 'bright' spark who decided that the bundle for the four main shows should be priced at US$80 - when the four individual shows were priced at US$19.95 - so the bundle costing more than the sum of the individual events - should be demoted. That was marketing illiteracy at its best.
CNMG's legal lashing of Gayelle has no moral standing, since they failed to market our Carnival in the best way possible. Hence, the outcry against them.
If their management has the courage of folks like Fazeer Mohammed and Jessie-Mae Ventour, who did not turn away from the criticisms on this morning's breakfast show on C TV, then I hold out hope for them to learn the lessons from this and come back stronger. But before I give them any money, since all they did this year was prove to be incompetent, they have to demonstrate that learning. So no money from me for them next year.
I've given up on the government's ability to learn from its mistakes, so no hope for them.
How does this thing work?
How does this thing work? Could someone explain
• Which masquerader gave permission to broadcast him or her?
• What percentage of the money earned by CNMG goes back to the participants?
• Was there any tendering?
• What about re-packaging and pay per view rights?
• Is this not himself to himself “in a palace state of mind?” by the “pharo of St Anns”
Who gave the state my right
Who gave the state my right to be filmed and broadcasted by a television station of my choosing?
This is like WASA claiming the rights to the water in the rivers, streams and seas!
The issue, to me, is not
The issue, to me, is not whether the government has to obtain the approval of every masquerader, pan man, DJ - in fact any person walking in front of a media house's video camera - before showing their image on TV. If the public didn't want their image to be seen, they'd have played mas in their house.
The issue to me is the creation of a bottleneck in the marketing of T&T's flagship event. When CNMG refused to re-license other media houses to show elements of T&T carnival by video - contrary to what they did for audio coverage - they should've backed it up with credible proof that they could handle the responsibility through the quality of the coverage and, particularly in the case of the live Internet streams, the reliability of the transmissions.
They failed on both.
Speaking specifically on the Internet streaming, CNMG's only expertise has been their broadcasting via C TV's ctntworld.com. However, the number of Internet users watching their regular programming is nowhere near the number of persons who would've been interested in watching Carnival events. The majority of Internet viewers are based outside of T&T. E.g., I wouldn't have invited my non-T&T friends to view the C TV's breakfast show, First Up, but I would've invited them to see the Parade of the Bands or Dimanche Gras or, definitely, the Panorama Finals. CNMG, through C TV, had no expertise in distributing coverage of an event to thousands of Internet users in the past. Hence, when their servers got hit by the crushing load of Internet users, their infrastructure failed.
If CNMG had chosen to share the distribution workload with other stations who had Internet channels, e.g. Gayelle, Synergy TV, WACK, and other established focal points for the T&T diaspora on the web, e.g. triniscene, then the customer load would have been less crushing and its name would have been covered in mud today.
The government has to take its share of the blame. It selected CNMG - was this tendered? - and so imposed a single point of failure in the distribution system. The other stakeholders - NCC, Pan Trinbago, NCBA, TUCO - also share in the blame, since they supported government's decision.
I hope they've learnt from this. However, since CNMG has only proven its incompetence, there's no way I would be buying any package from them - or any other single point of failure nominated by government - for future Carnivals. They would need to prove their competence first (if selected).
See www.knowtnt.com for other viewpoints.