Cherisse Moe

Fi­nan­cial woes have forced the man­age­ment of Gayelle The Chan­nel to down­size...again. The com­pa­ny's board of di­rec­tors is meet­ing to dis­cuss the fu­ture of the lo­cal­ly-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion as it con­tin­ues to grap­ple with grow­ing fi­nan­cial prob­lems. The sta­tion, pop­u­lar­ly known as Gayelle, cel­e­brat­ed its sev­enth an­niver­sary on Feb­ru­ary 16. How­ev­er, be­cause of a lack of what's be­ing de­scribed as "sus­tain­able ad­ver­tis­ing," Gayelle was forced to send home its en­tire news team last month. Gayelle founder Er­rol Fabi­an said while the com­pa­ny had not gone off air, he was left with lit­tle choice but to "down­size" its staff.

"We have had to con­sol­i­date re­cent­ly be­cause ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue is not com­ing as it used to...We had to make that de­ci­sion in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny," he said. This is not the first time that the cash-strapped tele­vi­sion en­ti­ty has had to send em­ploy­ees home. Last year, the com­pa­ny dis­solved its news­room and had teamed up with Ca­ble News Chan­nel 3 (CNC3) to present its view­ers with a 7 pm night­ly news­cast. "We just couldn't sus­tain it so now we have gone back to show­ing the news from CNC3," Fabi­an said. He said ru­mours that the sta­tion was clos­ing were un­true. He did con­firm, how­ev­er, that the sta­tion was ow­ing out­stand­ing rent and now had to "look at its fu­ture."

He added: "We are ow­ing plen­ty peo­ple, but I am tak­ing care of it. That's how busi­ness is...The rev­enue is flow­ing but not like be­fore." Fabi­an said the sta­tion was now op­er­at­ing with a team of "20-some­thing" em­ploy­ees and while lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ers did not seem to "buy in" to its phi­los­o­phy, he re­mained some­what op­ti­mistic about the com­pa­ny's fu­ture. "We have tak­en cer­tain de­ci­sions that haven't found favour from ad­ver­tis­ers," he said. "We don't car­ry for­eign con­tent and it's a fact that ad­ver­tis­ers and view­ers pre­fer for­eign con­tent. We do not ad­ver­tise al­co­hol on our sta­tion...Our qual­i­ty can­not be Hol­ly­wood qual­i­ty.

"For that we need mon­ey and mon­ey we do not have." Fabi­an said de­spite the lack of in­ter­est by cor­po­rate T&T, Gayelle was re­spon­si­ble for train­ing some of the na­tion's top me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists, cam­era­men and en­gi­neers. He said: We re­main in the game. We con­tin­ue to ex­ist. Thanks to all our view­ers and spon­sers...Long live Gayelle." One-time talk show host, Den­nis Tay&ea­cute; Allen, face of SporT­lighT-a show which briefly re­placed Anil Robert's pop­u­lar pro­gramme Spalk-said once Gayelle could not re­place Spalk, "their goose was cook." He added: "The sta­tion needs hits, and right now they don't have any." Allen said he and his team were yet to be com­pen­sat­ed for their work af­ter host­ing the fi­nal four episodes of Spalk, in Ju­ly 2010.