Richard Lord

More lo­cal con­tent, dig­i­tal ter­res­tri­al tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing and the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice (PBS) are among the ma­jor ob­jec­tives of new Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Rudrawa­tee Nan Ram­goolam for the na­tion­al me­dia.

The min­is­ter ad­dressed yes­ter­day's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) at the Mar­riott Court­yard Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain. She said the na­tion­al broad­cast pol­i­cy was be­ing re­viewed. Ram­goolam said all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), me­dia rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the gen­er­al pub­lic would be en­gaged in the es­tab­lish­ment of an amend­ed pol­i­cy. And one ma­jor change that was like­ly, the min­is­ter hint­ed, was more lo­cal con­tent.

She said T&T was blessed with a rich and di­verse cul­tur­al her­itage. Ram­goolam said in re­cent years, there had been con­sid­er­able de­vel­op­ments in the lo­cal con­tent pro­duc­tion sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of mu­sic and au­dio vi­su­al pro­duc­tion." She told the TTP­BA that both TATT and her min­istry were con­stant­ly be­ing ap­proached by stake­hold­ers "for an amend­ment to the ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy to en­cour­age the car­riage of a larg­er per­cent­age of lo­cal con­tent by the na­tion's broad­cast­er." She said the cur­rent na­tion­al pol­i­cy did not pro­vide for the reg­u­la­tion of lo­cal con­tent and "a re­view is cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty, which make rec­om­men­da­tions as to whether or not the pol­i­cy should in­clude mech­a­nisms to en­cour­age the car­riage of lo­cal con­tent."

Through­out her ad­dress, the min­is­ter spoke of the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to en­gage all stake­hold­ers in con­sul­ta­tions. She said the ex­ist­ing broad­cast pol­i­cy pro­vid­ed for lo­cal con­tent to be sup­port­ed through the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice. She added that a PBS was an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty es­tab­lished to in­form, ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain pub­lic au­di­ences, while main­tain­ing due in­su­la­tion from po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and com­mer­cial in­ter­ests. Deal­ing with the ex­ist­ing broad­cast code, the min­is­ter said it had been "premised on a co-reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proach, which en­sures that while the me­dia in­dus­try is held ac­count­able to the in­ter­ests of the pub­lic, the in­sti­tu­tion of the free­dom of the press is sup­port­ed and nur­tured."

Ram­goolam said giv­en the im­por­tance of a broad­cast code, she in­tend­ed to en­gage TATT and oth­er stake­hold­ers in fur­ther di­a­logue as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty in or­der to take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion on this mat­ter. Lat­er, in an in­ter­view, she said the is­sue of self-reg­u­la­tion by the me­dia was al­so be­ing giv­en ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion. Ram­goolam al­so spoke about the pro­posed 2015 date for the glob­al switchover to dig­i­tal trans­mis­sion for all ter­res­tri­al tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing. She said that the TATT al­ready had a draft Frame­work for Dig­i­tal Ter­res­tri­al Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices in T&T.

She list­ed the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal ter­res­tri­al tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing:

�2 in­crease the rev­enue gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty of the do­mes­tic tele­vi­sion mar­ket;

�2 pro­vide for an im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of ser­vices de­liv­ered; and

�2 fa­cil­i­tate greater ef­fi­cien­cy in the man­age­ment of the pub­lic elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum.