Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG), the state owned me­dia com­pa­ny, for­mal­ly TTT, has to­talled mil­lions in loss­es since its in­cep­tion in 2007. The com­pa­ny was closed in 2005 and a new ful­ly equipped en­ti­ty was recre­at­ed in 2007 by the PNM gov­ern­ment. This new en­ti­ty was ex­pect­ed to be the leader in broad­cast­ing, giv­en its state of the art equip­ment, and high salaries paid to at­tract the best tal­ent.

Up­on the change of gov­ern­ment in May 2010, Bri­an Stone was ap­point­ed chair­man of the Board. Ken Ali, a jour­nal­ist, was ap­point­ed in­ter­im CEO in 2010. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to lose mon­ey and con­tin­ues to de­pend on state sub­ven­tions to stay afloat. Stone re­signed ear­li­er this year and Gren­fell Kissoon, for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, was ap­point­ed chair­man to re­place him ear­li­er this month.

Kissoon has had a long and suc­cess­ful me­dia man­age­ment ca­reer, and is high­ly re­gard­ed as one of the best man­agers in the in­dus­try. He re­tired from all Board and ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions in the ANSA McAL group in April 2010. Kissoon, who start­ed his me­dia man­age­ment ca­reer at TTT and was able to turn around the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny from his first year of ap­point­ment, has man­aged in all arms of the me­dia, print, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion.

Kissoon meets the com­pa­ny in worse fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances than he en­coun­tered in 1988. The Sun­day Guardian spoke with Kissoon about his plans and the prospect for CN­MG, giv­en the dis­mal per­for­mance to date and the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment in which it op­er­ates.

Kissoon said he was per­suad­ed to take up the po­si­tion on the grounds that he should "do some pub­lic ser­vice." He ex­plained that the man­date from the line min­is­ter, Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, is to em­bark up­on more pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing and to re­duce the de­pen­dence on the trea­sury to ze­ro.

Kissoon ex­plained that the share­hold­er (the Gov­ern­ment) wants to use the state-owned me­dia as a key in­stru­ment in mould­ing and de­vel­op­ing a bet­ter so­ci­ety. In this re­gard, the pro­gram­ming in prime time will shift from pure en­ter­tain­ment "large­ly in the form of for­eign pro­grammes" to more lo­cal pro­duc­tions de­signed to ed­u­cate, in­spire and en­er­gise the pop­u­la­tion to­wards achieve­ment, growth, pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes and na­tion build­ing.

The pro­grammes should be able to mould bet­ter so­ci­etal val­ues, he not­ed, and give peo­ple a bet­ter sense of self and pur­pose and in­spire and en­er­gise them to­wards build­ing a bet­ter so­ci­ety. Asked if this is not po­lit­i­cal, Kissoon replied that all that he has out­lined is what good gov­er­nance should be about, and if it is in­ci­den­tal­ly po­lit­i­cal, that is good.

Kissoon said that from a per­son­al point of view, he want­ed to de­vote his re­tire­ment years to shar­ing his knowl­edge and con­tribut­ing val­ue to his fel­low­men, and so­ci­ety at large. Kisson has em­barked on "Ex­ec­u­tive Coach­ing" in his con­sult­ing busi­ness, since he felt he had con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and ex­per­tise which could be of ben­e­fit to­wards shap­ing the at­ti­tudes of as­pir­ing man­agers.

Asked whether he was con­fi­dent of achiev­ing the man­date, Kissoon said he al­ways took his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties se­ri­ous­ly, and this as­sign­ment will be no dif­fer­ent. He said that the skill set he ac­quired over the years po­si­tioned him well to treat with the chal­lenges at CN­MG. He said he has en­joyed an ex­cel­lent pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with the line min­is­ter over the years, and that they shared a com­mon vi­sion for CN­MG and this makes his job eas­i­er.