PART FOUR: The Big Picture: Conclusion & Recommendations

 The early concern of Caribbean Churches about the inflow of U.S programs in the early 1980s was real. They questioned whether the region could maintain traditional values while concentrating on social, political and economic development. The Caribbean Conference of Churches amplified the need to have a cultural counterweight to the heavy flow of foreign television content that they feared would overrun the indigenous culture. No doubt, national sovereignty is endangered by cultural penetration of the media.

Unfortunately, western media products created the expectation for a certain material life style and successfully sold a westernize life style for Caribbean countries, even though some media managers argue to the contrary. The weight of cultural imperialism pressed upon the Caribbean folk, making it difficult to get all types of local programming to take off. The battle for cultural preservation met with resistance internally as well. For many Caribbean people, nothing that is local is good enough. Resistance to things local on TV is sustained and reinforced. Despite the limited progress against this negative attitude, for the islands developing in the shadow of their colonial masters, cultural identity is still a challenge.

Further, economic factors complicated effort. United States programs are far cheaper than producing local programs. These program sources know that they had a ready Caribbean market to generate additional income from advertising by selling the Caribbean market as an incentive.

These US program sources were happy to sell programs to Caribbean stations albeit at a cheaper price. In the early 1980s program cost and copyright enforcement were nonexistent in the Caribbean. TV station owners simply tapped into satellite signal that fell in their back yards. Thus, there were no incentives to seek alternate local program fare. However, by the early 1990s and more aggressively so in the Y2K era, the United States began to enforce the U.S copyright Act of 1988. The act had stipulations that prevented Caribbean TV stations and cable operators from intercepting and retransmitting U.S Cable program without consent and without adequate compensation to U.S rights holders.

Although national broadcasting policies carried a local content regulation, this did not seem to carry much weight. Most stations filled their local program quota with seasonal cultural programs. In the case of Marpin TV of Dominica, the station simply gave the government a dedicated channel for local programs.

Not even the government could provide adequate local fare to sustain that dedicated channel. If for example, each TV station featured in Table 2 produced at least one local program a quarter from 1988 to 2019 (when US copyright laws began to be heavily enforced and stations were scrambling to replace channels), the Caribbean would have a bank of almost four thousand local programs in syndication throughout the region right now! The golden age of local content in the wake of the Black Power movement, self-determination and media ownership changes has long disappeared. Today, almost fifty years after the introduction of television, the Caribbean region consumes more foreign content than it did in the 1960s and 1970s. Cable TV stations operate 24 hours every day of the year.

Caribbean TV stations bring the world to the people in real time but is ill equipped to bring the region’s people together even by frame delay. Nevertheless, local content quotas alone do not have sufficient impact on increased local content on television. I think collaboration between private stations, production houses and the governments are a more sustainable approach. Marpin TV station production failed because the company did not collaborate with the state to produce programs that could remain in circulation locally and regionally.

The governments must be intentional in facilitating tax incentives for local program producers. Governments should subsidize local production; facilitate training as well as regional and international marketing efforts.

Caribbean governments are in perfect position to encourage regional telecoms entities to help media institution increase and improve local program content. Convergence technology allows for more than triple play bundles – telecoms companies can and should collaborate with state entities to help Caribbean people see what is happening around and among each other in real time. Currently, Digicel and Flow, have both introduced their own profit-making sports channels. According to veteran journalist Julian Rogers (2016) these telecoms giants are “well endowed … the only ones making money. They are the only ones getting “top up”. Rogers further opined that it is time for telecom companies to work with the [region] collectively to create a network that allows us to see ourselves in real time; again, CMC is well positioned to facilitate this type of collaboration since it now serves as the only regional clearinghouse for local programs. To remain sustainable CMC must have an inflow of new, well- produced programs that appeal to the region and the world.