Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

TTT Lim­it­ed has apol­o­gised to the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) for tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech at the Di­vali Na­gar over the week­end, but the NCIC is yet to de­cide on whether the state-owned me­dia com­pa­ny’s ex­pres­sion of re­gret is suf­fi­cient.

TTT has al­so of­fered to show an un­in­ter­rupt­ed broad­cast of the en­tire night’s events on its so­cial me­dia pages and web page, but this does not sat­is­fy the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which has sug­gest­ed po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence may be at work.

On Sun­day, UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo wrote to TTT re­quest­ing a full ex­pla­na­tion in­to the trans­mis­sion dis­rup­tion on Sat­ur­day (Oc­to­ber 26), while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ask­ing for an apol­o­gy to the na­tion and a com­mit­ment that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech would be re-broad­cast be­fore and on the Di­vali hol­i­day.

The UNC al­so in­ferred that such ac­tions reek of po­lit­i­cal mal­ice, giv­en that TTT is state-con­trolled and the dis­rup­tion on­ly oc­curred when Per­sad-Bisses­sar was on stage.

Yes­ter­day, TTT CEO Adri­an Win­ter said the is­sue was caused by an au­tonomous au­to­mat­ic up­date that oc­curred dur­ing the broad­cast.

Win­ter ex­plained, “To rec­ti­fy this is­sue, the sys­tem was rolled back to its pre­vi­ous op­er­a­tional state. This suc­cess­ful­ly re­stored net­work func­tion­al­i­ty, al­low­ing us to re­con­nect to the stream. These events oc­curred be­tween 8.26 pm and 9.23 pm, when our mas­ter con­trol team reestab­lished the live broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. Our tech­ni­cal team con­tin­ued work in­to the morn­ing of Oc­to­ber 27, 2024, where a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of our ICT sys­tems was con­duct­ed to en­sure that no such dis­rup­tions will re­oc­cur.”

With re­spect to the UNC’s ac­cu­sa­tion of po­lit­i­cal mis­chief, Win­ter lament­ed, “That in­fer­ence is in­deed un­for­tu­nate, as I can con­firm that it was in­deed a tech­ni­cal is­sue.”

He added, “In re­dress­ing the is­sue of the un­fore­seen break in trans­mis­sion of the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions, we will be post­ing the full un­in­ter­rupt­ed footage from Oc­to­ber 26, 2024, to our so­cial me­dia pages and web­page.”

Win­ter said it was to be post­ed by 7 pm last evening.

He said TTT sin­cere­ly re­gret­ted the is­sue and for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed this to the NCIC.

Mean­while, NCIC head De­oroop Teemal said an apol­o­gy did come to them via email on Sun­day.

Asked if he was sat­is­fied with the apol­o­gy, Teemal would on­ly say, “The apol­o­gy has been giv­en, we have not re­spond­ed as yet, we are look­ing at it. The mat­ter is be­ing dis­cussed in­ter­nal­ly, so we have not re­al­ly come to a con­clu­sion about be­ing sat­is­fied with the apol­o­gy.”

Teemal said he did not wish to com­ment on the ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

“I am not mak­ing any­thing of it, some­thing hap­pened, TTT has is­sued a for­mal apol­o­gy to us, so to ex­press any views on whether or not it was de­lib­er­ate or not, on our part, I will not get in­to that,” he said.

Teemal said TTT has in­di­cat­ed the NCIC will get a full copy of the pro­gramme, which it can air on its YouTube chan­nel.

But TTT’s ex­pla­na­tion and planned way for­ward was not enough for the UNC.

UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo ques­tioned why TTT was not al­so broad­cast­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech on tele­vi­sion as well.

“TTT has a broad­cast li­cence and a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme, this broad­cast that was in­ter­rupt­ed was on their live broad­cast on TTT’s tele­vi­sion sta­tion. If they are to re­broad­cast, it should not be on their so­cial me­dia pages, it should be on their tele­vi­sion pro­gramme,” he ar­gued.

How­ev­er, in re­sponse to that, Win­ter said, “It is im­por­tant to note that the Oc­to­ber 26 show is 3 hours, 14 mins and 43 sec­onds long. As you would know, the re­broad­cast of any pro­gram­ming last­ing that long re­quires a more com­plex so­lu­tion that in­volves find­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate time slot giv­en oth­er ex­ist­ing broad­cast­ing com­mit­ment.”

Mean­while, Tan­coo said he was still not sat­is­fied with the tech­ni­cal ex­pla­na­tion giv­en for the break­down.

“I still want to see a prop­er tech­ni­cal re­port on what hap­pened. I un­der­stand the ex­pla­na­tion but I find it par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that it took place specif­i­cal­ly at that time. Any broad­cast crew go­ing out­side will know that while you are live on broad­cast, you make sure you up­date every­thing. This tech­ni­cal thing should have been fac­tored in be­fore the broad­cast be­cause up­dates are pre­dictable,” Tan­coo ar­gued.

But Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga coun­tered those al­le­ga­tions.

“I know that it serves cer­tain peo­ple for us to see shad­ows in every sin­gle cor­ner. That is not what this case is,” de No­bri­ga said yes­ter­day.

He added, “I think it went down for an hour, I don’t know how long the Op­po­si­tion Leader spoke for? About ten min­utes? If it had been cut as she be­gan to speak and brought back just as she came off I could un­der­stand that, but it went down for an hour be­cause of a tech­ni­cal is­sue at TTT and they in­formed the NCIC as it was hap­pen­ing.”

De No­bri­ga said his po­si­tion on the mat­ter is sim­ple.

“TTT and the NCIC are sort­ing it out, and I get how the ca­su­al or bias ob­serv­er may want to cre­ate a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry there, but it is sim­ply not there,” he said.