PART ONE: An Historic Overview of the Caribbean Television Climate

The introduction of broadcast television to the Caribbean was not an isolated act. After World War II and the inception of the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union, a number of events and conditions unfolded: the state of world Oil Market, OPEC fuel crisis, decolonization, the birth of UN and UNESCO, and the New World Information and Communication Order.

The dependency theorists argued that the capitalist colonial imperialist left the Caribbean region depraved, exploited and underdeveloped. Great Britain decolonization efforts left an ideology control gap so the new states were now vulnerable to influences of two rivals, one from the East – Soviet Union and the other from West -USA.

The Caribbean islands were among the new independent Third World nations that embraced both capitalism and socialism and were underdeveloped. Central to the tension of the times were arguments about the free flow of ideas and development assistance for new independent nations. The four pillars of the New World Information and Communication Order included Decolonization and Development.

Advances in communication technology, such as satellite, offered new opportunities for transporting the free flow of ideas espoused by the USA via UN and UNESCO. Economic development depended on assistance from foreign donors and economic development needed the support of mass communication to thrive. The stage was set for the infiltration of the one-way free flow of ideas and a new phase of imperialism – media imperialism. How would this manifest in the small island developing states?

Foreign television program content comprised seventy-five percent of Caribbean programming as early as the 1970’s. The media (product) dependency theory was applied to examine why local television program is in short supply. This little study drew on historical accounts to explain how and why Cable Television was introduced in the early eighties and the impact it had on the development of local television programing content.

Did economic poverty and a lack of professional expertise result in the almost non-existence of local television production in the Caribbean? Were the developments in the media, a result of the islands’ colonial past and did that history influence the growth of local television production? In a region, known for a multitude of talent and material suitable for television product creation, why has there been a persistent dependency on foreign programming, especially via cable, and from the United States of America?

To understand the phenomena, it is important to examine available literature along the themes of ownership and control, talent, technology, and product development capacity.

First among island nations to introduce broadcast television was the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in 1962. Immediately following were Jamaica in 1963 and Barbados (CBC- TV) in 1964. Antigua and Barbuda (ZAL-TV) followed in 1965 and St. Kitts and Nevis (ZIZ-TV) in 1972. By 1983 Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Grenada, Dominica, Bahamas, St. Vincent and the Grenadines all had broadcast television stations.

The issue of control played a significant role in Caribbean media. Lent (1991) contends that mass media in the Caribbean has almost, always been controlled by foreign companies, local governments, political and non- political parties and religious groups. Brown (1990) notes that when broadcasting was introduced in the region the colonial governments recognized that the media had power to influence mass opinion and shape popular values in the region. It was Daley, in 1980 who questioned the relationship between Caribbean governments and the broadcast industry there. He stated that the close and cordial relationship might have created a stifling information environment.

Media practitioners throughout the Caribbean, especially in addressing the West Indian Commission of 1991, expressed dissatisfaction with the patterns of ownership of media and argued that although the media were important factors in the regional development, media did not have a suitable environment in which to perform. Media workers in the 1980 and 1990s contended that media did not play as significant a role as they could have in preparing West Indian nationals for the 21st century. Media practitioners opined that there was too much government control over the dissemination of information and the structure and pattern of media ownership. Media practitioners noted that government was quick to control them but slow to invest in their training to prevent low worker morale and high staff turnover.

Caribbean government ownership of the media did not equal economic stability. The threat of not being able to maintain foreign media product and technology forced island politicians to rely on foreign aid. Media scholars such as Lent (1990) suggests that media programing in the Caribbean region should not be approached on a big scale unless the government and other local entities had the resources to keep the media (content) local and independent. Seemingly, Lent is concerned about convincing Caribbean governments and people about the importance of systematic development. This may have led Basedeo to raise the troubling question; whether the Caribbean media could adopt national development goals while maintaining their integrity, independence and freedom. Yet others claim that private sector incentives to get involved in local media is lacking though they claim that investors are unwilling to put their money in areas where government chose to get involved too often. It is a fact that television systems, from the 1970s to late 1990s were owned in whole or in part by the state. Investor complaints during this period centered on high government levies and government abuse of airtime privileges.

According to Lent (1972), government of the islands retained media ownership because island government were insecure and had both direct and subtle restrictions on the media. Turow (1984) cited that governments’ power made them the real owners of media resources. Government controlled tax benefits, which could ease cash flow. Governments controlled broadcast rights, training programs, personnel, and laws, which could ensure cheaper or more available personnel. It is important that the communication process be viewed in the context of prevailing power systems; those who preside over the allocation of resources in production, employment, investment income and profit.   However, where exactly does power reside in relation to the Caribbean media? Lent (1990) describes the ownership pattern of television in the Caribbean region as one where a local fronted as the owner, the majority shareholder and investor was a foreigner from America and the government often had a 20 percent equity. The governments made large profits without investing any capital and held reign over licenses that seldom ran for more than five to ten years in any one instance.

While some nationals argued against governments’ total ownership of media concerns, some governments especially in the larger Caribbean islands such as Jamaica opposed that argument saying that foreign ownership of media was not comparative with the national interest. In Jamaica particularly, government preserved power when they took over the broadcast media from Britain in 1977. Government sold 50 percent of shares to the public and kept 25 percent. Nevertheless, the Manley government retained the right to appoint two of the twelve board members and the managing director.

Manley’s media philosophy was unique and important. He subscribed to a development model approach to the media, and underlined the fact that the media’s agenda should be in keeping with the government’s agenda for national development. Manley did not care if the press shared his concept for national development but he insisted that the media practitioners had to have a concept of national interest. Yet, he believed that the media should be free from the government manipulation to preserve the democratic process.

Manley, like Drake (1982), advocated in keeping with the new world information order that the news media should serve the public directly, but in terms of control, Caribbean governments believed that they should be the ones acting on behalf of the public to hold the media accountable through firm control.

Training Talent to Produce and Present Local Programs

Caribbean governments’ pattern of ownership, influenced by the islands’ economic status, affected the training and hiring of staff. Nettleford (1987) notes the Caribbean region was in danger of alienation from itself due to the region’s pattern of ownership and control in television. He claimed that the government ownership threatened to imprison an entire people through its self-serving propaganda. Media practitioners needed to find a way to break out of the dominance-dependence relationship characteristic of information flow and have opportunities to develop continuity and background reporting. The presence of training facilities at long distant satellite education centers of the University of the West Indies (UWIDITE) gave hope to Lalor and Marette (1986). They thought UWIDITE would have been a path to equip the region’s media practitioners to produce programs for television in a cheap and effective manner. However, Brown (1990) argued that specialized skill was needed for producing programs for broadcast media, especially television and those who had access to training were the ones who would perpetuate and transmit elitist values through the media.

In the early days media staff training came from the motherland media house, the BBC. Formal training for media practitioners began in early 1970s and by 1973 training was at a tertiary level. The Caribbean Conference of Churches and the Extra Mural Department of the University of the West Indies organized the Regional Communicarib course (of which I am an alumnus – class of 1981). Training facilities were at Codrington College in Barbados. This program was discontinued in 1982 due to lack of funding as well as the rise of Caribbean Institute of Mass Communication (CARIMAC), based in Jamaica. Despite the presence of CARIMAC, as with tradition, more persons from the Caribbean region go abroad to study in the field of communication. By mid-1980s the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, a non- profit association of Caribbean public service and commercial broadcasters, also provided in-house training for members. Funding for training came from the German based, Ebert Stiftung Foundation. Generally, there was limited assistance for training of practitioners and no training in media management.

Program Design and Production

Somehow, the overseas training and the programming created did not represent cultural institutions with which the region’s people could identify. Seemingly, the desire for local programming was never there.

According to Lent (1989), indigenous cultural forms of local production were not acceptable in the region unless they equaled the British or American quality to which the public had grown accustomed. By the early 1990’s foreign domination of programming in television was deemed at crisis point. Would this be corrected and why?

A Caribbean conference on communications called for license stipulations that included the following: an increase in local programming; regional cooperation of producers to create programs with a Caribbean outlook; research emphasis on the effect of foreign programming in the Caribbean communities and for stipulations that limited the percentage of program imports from any one country outside of the Caribbean region. From 1990, Caribbean media scholars expressed a wish to see regional media used to enhance communication in service of development. Ironically, even while the governments of the third world struggled to survive, the International Telecommunications Union urged them to make budget allocations for telecommunications thinking that communications would be a stimulus for economic development. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing! Survival versus investment in telecommunications. The cost of infrastructure and local programming in sparsely populated agricultural communities of the Caribbean is a deterring factors for any investment or investor. How could these poor islands acquire, reach and develop capabilities to better adapt telecommunications technology to local conditions and requirements?

reduce the regions’ media product dependence on foreign programs. This vision, as quickly as it surfaced, diminished and never materialized. Governments in the region were unable to counteract the massive inflow of foreign program content in the region. Foreign culture and political thought flowed freely, enabled by the new communication technologies, such as broadcast satellite and collaboration among member states.

While some Caribbean islands had local television stations as early as 1966 (especially Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, Antigua and Jamaica) these former British colonies, although now independent, relied on foreign content to fill their programming schedules. Further, most of these islands relied on Britain for staff, equipment and training. According to Lent (1990) most Caribbean television stations developed with assistance from major foreign countries. He further intimated that even what islands called authentic Caribbean programming was influenced by British and American formats. These stations were government owned.

Foreign television program content in the various Commonwealth Caribbean countries ranged from 50 to 90 percent. The Bahamas had one hundred percent foreign programming. Antigua and Barbuda had sixty percent, Trinidad and Tobago had eighty percent and Dominica, ninety-eight percent foreign programming. Most of the local programming were news and features from the Government Information Service. Local producers were discouraged from producing due to saturation of television program imports.

Nevertheless, the need to place greater emphasis on program content and for more local programming and production among systems in the region persisted. Therefore, from late 1960s and well into the 1990s the Caribbean islands boasted some limited form of local programming.

The programming schedule in the Caribbean comprised nine hours beginning at about three o’clock in the afternoon. Jamaica aired nineteen and a half hours of local programs a week. The Leeward Islands region aired eight hours, Barbados aired nine hours and Trinidad aired about twenty hours of local television a week. In the late 1970s Trinidad was the only source for homemade television in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Trinidad had a five-year plan that included the production of local television for circulation throughout the region.  Despite this achievement, Trinidad had only a seventeen percent increase of foreign local program over a ten- year period.

Most media managers said that they would love to produce local shows with cultural and educational impact but claimed that television program production in a developing country was too expensive. The duty on television equipment alone was at about fifty-seven percent and most users repaired and purchased equipment in Miami. Lack of funds and capacity resulted in poor execution of local production projects.

Interestingly, according to Lent (1990) Cuba is the only exception in the area of foreign program domination. Cuban television system produced seventy percent of its programming amounting to eleven thousand hours yearly. Cuba produced enough programming to seek overseas markets. Cuba and the Dominican Republic had employed low-cost methods to produce television programs to teach literacy and numeracy skills. Haiti also produced low-cost programs. Of note is the video Karavan (Caravan) used to inform and educate Haiti’s nine provinces; so too is in addition to the Creole language package of short video information on reforestation.

For Lent (1990), the Caribbean region governments’ must take blame for the impact of foreign programming on the Caribbean region. True, the United States government and media conglomerates cared less about the cultural and economic impact that foreign programs had on the islands. It was, however, the business of the Caribbean governments to look out for the welfare their people. Most media scholars labeled the efforts of officials in television broadcasting as lackadaisical. When they gathered to discuss communication for development these officials spent more time promoting high technology- oriented media (which they could ill afford) fooling themselves into believing that communication technology (rather than content of programs) changed people’s attitude.

At the dawn of the 1990s, Caribbean media scholars like Lent (1991) and Brown (1990) called for the region to formulate policies that allowed for the free movement of personnel, equipment and supplies around the region. This, they hoped would increase the potential to produce regional and marketable visual material. They further recommended that the Caribbean region should invest in training of skills needed to create visual media software, and advocated for more media programs in schools of the region. In support of their views, Cambridge (1991) added that the Caribbean region had a wealth of material suitable for packaging into programs. However, these sources were taken for granted and no one cared too much about documenting these materials.

The colonial past of the Caribbean region, the style of ownership, the lack of funds and the high percentage of un-trained staff affected the growth of local television production and programming. Regional advertisers gave minimal sponsorship to local television programs. In fact, they relied on radio and print because they deemed these cheaper and faster. The Caribbean region relied heavily on foreign aid and investment capital was scarce.

The beneficiaries of this increase in foreign television fare were not the government and people of the region but rather the Motion Picture Association of America. The Caribbean Basin Recovery Act was used to prevent Caribbean entrepreneurs from pirating US made programming. The abundance of foreign programming also yielded great advertising profits for US businesses.

Foreign programs came with foreign commercials. The Caribbean, most claimed, should have learned to match the growth of local television production and programming to the pace of development in the region.

This, some claim, would help maintain and preserve Caribbean identity, values and culture and stem the dependency on foreign programs. Heed the call of Bob Lester Marley! Emancipate yourself from mental [and I add] economic slavery!