The first vi­sion for CNC3 was to be the pre­mier ca­ble news net­work for the Caribbean re­gion. That goal was en­cap­su­lat­ed and then some. It would take even more hard work for some ded­i­cat­ed in­di­vid­u­als to make that dream be­come a re­al­i­ty.

In the 18 years of that dream com­ing to fruition, many have played crit­i­cal roles.

Me­dia vet­er­an and CNC3’s Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor at Guardian Me­dia Ltd, Samp­son Nan­ton, is one of those peo­ple at CNC3 who has a unique un­der­stand­ing of the net­work’s his­to­ry. His pas­sion for CNC3 is clear, as he has held mul­ti­ple roles, all of which have played an in­te­gral role.

Nan­ton laud­ed CNC3 for be­com­ing the on­ly me­dia house in the coun­try with a full chro­ma key set.

“We were to al­so be the first to have re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed cam­eras in the stu­dio from the con­trol room, with­out the need for cam­era per­son­nel in the stu­dio. At the time, we were on­ly go­ing to broad­cast on ca­ble and were al­lo­cat­ed chan­nel 3, so that’s how we chose the orig­i­nal name, Ca­ble News Chan­nel Three,” he said.

As the team plugged away, more suc­cess would come. Three years lat­er, the net­work was giv­en a na­tion­al free-to-air li­cence and on No­vem­ber 1, 2008, they start­ed broad­cast­ing to a wider au­di­ence who didn’t have ca­ble.

From that point, the Ca­ble News Chan­nel Three la­bel was no more, as CNC3 was born. Lo­cal­ly pro­duced tele­vi­sion would find an­oth­er out­let to flour­ish.

CNC3’s first “newscast” was published in the T&T Guardian on September 25, 2005, after the Telecommunications Authority stopped the initial broadcast that was due on September 24, 2005.

De­liv­ery of the news re­mained a top pri­or­i­ty for the net­work. This is clear­ly shown to­day by the fact that the net­work is the lo­cal broad­cast part­ner and an af­fil­i­ate of both Al Jazeera and CNN In­ter­na­tion­al. Simul­casts of both sta­tions are run through­out the day.

When it comes to lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment, CNC3 dis­tin­guish­es it­self from all oth­er net­works with lo­cal­ly pro­duced shows like the im­mense­ly pop­u­lar The Run­down host­ed by An­cil “Blaze” Isaac and What Tong Say, host­ed by Ger­vail Jr Lee Lemo and Jamie Sim­mons.

Over the years, CNC3 went on to dom­i­nate the lo­cal tele­vi­sion land­scape and broad­cast the 2018 FI­FA World Cup in HD on dig­i­tal ca­ble plat­forms and on their web­site.

Nan­ton ex­plained that over the years, CNC3 al­so signed an agree­ment with a broad­cast­er who got the Week In Re­view in New York, New Jer­sey and Wash­ing­ton every Sun­day, so its reach ex­pand­ed.

“One way they were sure that suc­cess was on the hori­zon was when sto­ries start­ed be­ing broad­cast across the re­gion by the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC). The his­toric mo­ments would con­tin­ue to come.

“We cov­ered the Olympic Games many times by send­ing teams there but our great­est pride came in the sto­ries we were able to cov­er. Some of these in­clud­ed Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s vis­it dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in April 2009, Queen Eliz­a­beth II com­ing in No­vem­ber of that same year for the Com­mon­wealth, the cov­er­age of Prince Charles and Camil­la’s vis­it, the King and Queen of Spain’s vis­it as well as the Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing,” he added.

A page in a CNC3 booklet showcases early team members, from left, Head of News Rosemarie Sant, news anchor Shelly Dass, sports anchor Roger Sant, news anchor Odeka O’Neil, The Morning Show host Hema Ramkissoon, weekend anchor Francesca Hawkins, assignment editor Sampson Nanton and senior reporter Sateesh Mahabir.

Nan­ton al­so shared some of the oth­er no­table mo­ments in cov­er­age, in­clud­ing “the in­au­gu­ra­tions of Pres­i­dents and Prime Min­is­ters, Ri­han­na, the Eng­land na­tion­al foot­ball team with the likes of David Beck­ham and the fu­ner­al of Nel­son Man­dela in South Africa.”

Even though these stand out to him, he read­i­ly ad­mit­ted that the team has cov­ered many oth­er sig­nif­i­cant events.

“Do­ing those and still be­ing able to cov­er the av­er­age sto­ries that mat­ter to peo­ple earned us the right to say “We are where you are” and we re­main proud of that.”

Editing administrator Jason Perriera, executive producer Sampson Nanton and former chief cameraman Mano Ragbir celebrate CNC3’s Number 1 status on July 25, 2013.