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Speaker:The Honourable Basdeo Panday, Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Date: July 14, 2000
Occasion: Remarks at the National Broadcasting Network's Presentation at the La Boucan Room of the Trinidad Hilton Hotel.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am sure that every one of you have had someone say on meeting you that you are much better looking in the flesh than in your photographs.
Right?
Madame Chair,
Mrs. Brenda da Silva:
I am sure that you have often had people say that you are even better looking in person than on television, if that were possible.
May I add, Brenda, that you also sound even more alluring, and even more assuring, in the intimacy of the La Boucan.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
You will all agree, I am sure, that Brenda da Silva is one of NBN's and one of broadcast media's finest assets.
Among all broadcasters, Brenda has the rare ability to bring great dignity to the most commonplace event.
My Friends:
It is quite unusual for me to enter a room filled with media people without a certain degree of trepidation.
That trepidation increases when I see some of the most legitimately powerful female media executive in the country is present this morning.
You know, it's much easier dealing with the men controlling the media organisations.
You always know where they are coming from.
They are coming straight at you.
Attack! Attack! Attack!
Should you ever be lulled into a sense of security by Newsday's departure from the standard media mode of multiple and sustained attack you are in for an early and inevitably jolting reminder that there is always a sting in Newsday's tail.
Proof, perhaps, that the female of the species is indeed deadlier than the male.
Seriously, my friends, what sets Newsday apart from its competitors is, of course, the essential component of good journalism, balance.
From Newsday's performance, that policy of balance, together with more news, less views, finds great favour with newspaper buyers, and very evidently with advertising executives.
On the business of balance, I wonder how many of you have noticed how balanced NBN has become in its current incarnation.
To test these propositions, I invite those of you who are old enough to cast your minds back to TTT's earliest years.
Those were the years, the decades when TTT was a protected State monopoly.
From the sixties to the start of the nineties, you will find not a single instance when an opposition politician was invited into TTT's studios on Maraval Road for extended, wide-ranging, hour-long talk sessions, live.
There was, we must concede, that exception on July 27th, 1990, when Abu Bakr was on the Panorama set with his gunmen.
They were, however, not invited by the station's management.
It is of some significance, indeed it is of notable significance that NBN has ended this total shutout of opposition politicians that had been so vigourously practised over the decades of the sixties, the seventies, and the eighties.
Yesterday, an Opposition Member of Parliament held sway for more than an hour on 'AT&T This Morning'.
That show, I am told, is now the morning Talk Show of choice among television viewers.
Early last month, that Opposition MP's Leader was also the sole guest on T&T This Morning, from sign-on, into the second hour.
Some people would call that democracy in action.
It is democracy in action, in unprecedented fashion.
Nothing like that has ever happened in the past.
In fact, Hamilton Clement will tell you that at 610, there was a time when opposition voices, and labour voices, were even banned from news reports, far less sit-down chat shows.
My Friends:
You know that whenever I mention the word Democracy in relation to the media, certain persons immediately start seeing red, or blue, or green as the case may be.
But in other societies, equally passionate about freedoms and democracy, the subject is being seriously examined.
In his new book, 'ARich Media, Poor Democracy', Robert Mc Chesney challenges the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information choices is, ipso facto, a truly democratic society.
Mr. Mc Chesney argues that the major beneficiaries of the current information age are wealthy investors, advertisers, and a handful of enormous media, computer and telecommunications corporations.
(He omitted Advertising Agencies from that list).
Any how, Mr. Mc Chesney asserts that this concentrated corporate control is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy.
The recent volcanic radio blitz, in support of the last calypso show staged at the Queen's Park Savannah, and patently in support of a particular political party, is a shocking example of what Robert Mc Chesney would call 'A Vested Privilege' displacing Democracy.
Robert Mc Chesney's thesis is essentially a call for media entities such as NBN aspires to be.
NBN has been established on the basis that the organisation should be accountable to and responsible for contributing to the enrichment of the lives of its stakeholders.
We are all stakeholders in the National Broadcasting Network.
You and I, every one of us in this room, are stakeholders in NBN.
The Chairman of NBN said it - with forceful political subtlety, I must say, - when he described NBN as being 'Of the people, by the people and for the people.
Other media may make the same claim.
Only NBN can make this claim with legitimacy.
On this score, it is my objective to translate Stakeholders in NBN into Shareholders in the National Broadcasting Corporation, in the shortest possible time.
This objective will only be realised when NBN becomes a profitable entity, when its economic viability is assured.
Selling NBN to a wealthy investor - as has been suggested - is not an option.
That would simply add to the concentration of private preserved wealth and would, as has already been said, be disastrous for any notion of democracy.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Advertising Executives who were in practice in years past would well remember the days when Lloyd Rochard, and Mark Conyers, were often unable to make room on their bulging advertising schedules for more ads.
Those were the days of advertising legends such as Andrew Christiansen, Reggie da Silva, and John Corbin.
Such people can tell you how tough it was when there was a single television station in this country.
During peak seasons you had to book far in advance to get prime time on TTT.
TTT, 610 Radio and 100 FM have been valuable partners to many of the advertising agencies which spawned many of the agencies operating in today's market, and present in this room.
They had no alternative choice.
During the decades when it was a sellers market in the TV and radio industry in Trinidad and Tobago TTT, 610 Radio and 100 FM were there for advertisers.
I submit that it would be true to say that companies represented in this room, and their advertising agencies, have prospered over the years with a little help from their faithful friends at 610 Radio, 100FM and TTT.
Given all of this, it would be welcome if TTT and 610 Radio and FM 100 could now have the assurance that they can count on their old friends among advertisers and ad agencies.
On a strictly competitive basis, advertisers can base their media spend on numbers.
Such an approach means lost opportunities to exploit the unmatched range of options in the NBN portfolio.
You would all be aware of notable examples when radio and television
programming was created by advertisers, instead of by the broadcast houses.
The highly regarded 'A Hallmark Theatre of the Air' is a notable example.
That series was created by an ad agency, was it not?
Here in Trinidad and Tobago, the Energy Quiz is a case-in-point.
My dear friends:
NBN's essential mandate is defined in the first word of its name, NATIONAL.
NBN's specific mandate is to concentrate on local programming.
I am forever being told that local programming is too expensive, an understandable position when the bottom line is the only consideration.
Major advertisers in major markets see it differently.
They see investment in communities as effective marketing and good as business.
Those marketers also see lifestlye marketing as the way to go.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
You may all be thinking that your Prime Minister is being presumptuous in having the temerity to talk marketing with you.
Let me simply say that politicians, including Prime Ministers, as well as priests and other clergymen, are targeting and serving the same customers you pitch, using the same techniques, and many of the media, that you employ.
We also do attitudinal testing, and we use focus groups, just like you do.
Indeed, I would like to see NBN invest in ongoing market research so that when they call on you, they offer audience demographics instead of just numbers.
I can tell you that my elections team is doing precision voter - targeting that is laser- like in accuracy, in every box, in every voting district, in every constituency in the country.
Let's talk again about local programming.
A number of corporations in this room enjoy profits at the 9-digit level, others in the 8-digit range.
You can easily, and profitably, afford to invest in the production of local programmes with NBN.
Perhaps the way to start is to retire the brand called 'A Local'@ in programming.
Let's replace it with 'A Original Programming.'
That is what the BBC has done.
And that is what the highly successful network MTV is all about original lifestyle marketing.
We know that the movie videos are supplied but it's never been suggested that MTV programming was expensive.
NBN has the flexibility to work with you in customising reasonably priced original programming to reach and motivate your target customers.
NBN is beginning to acquire the cachet of a winner.
Which network, in any market, has offered you Shaq O'Neil in the NBA finals, the Williams' Sisters winning Wimbledon, Euro 2000 Football and , for better or worse, the West Indies Tour of England with the Olympics, and World Cup 2002 still to come?
All of this is compelling evidence that the Renaissance has picked up momentum at NBN.
Look, now, at the current wave of prosperity on which virtually every business in this country, and almost certainly every business represented in this room, is rising.
Trinidad and Tobago's ratings are high, and climbing, on the indices that matter in the places that count.
Poverty is down to single digits; where I expect unemployment will be next year.
That increases buying power and creates new customers for you.
The current revolution in education is transforming this country.
Every organisation represented in this room is benefitting from the government's removal of VAT from computers and computer supplies.
Through Bi-Lateral agreements that I have been piloting with various governments, we are opening up new markets, allowing our exporters of goods and services vastly expanded opportunities.
My dear friends:
If all of us in this room consider ourselves not as Vendors and Buyers, but as partners in development of our home market, we will all be winners.
Our country would be a winner.
When Trinis unite, we win.
Let us all be winners.
Let us build one another, together.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity of talking with you this morning.
May God Bless every one of you.