Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Had there not been a gen­er­al elec­tion last year, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion would not have seen an in­crease in rev­enue. Pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) Ki­ran Ma­haraj says 2009 marked the first de­crease in "ad spend" in the pre­vi­ous sev­en years. Ma­haraj said while the TTP­BA's an­nu­al me­dia billings re­port for 2010 was not yet avail­able, the broad­cast fig­ures pro­vid­ed by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T were sim­i­lar. She said ra­dio in 2010 was at $166 mil­lion com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year when it was $153 mil­lion. Tele­vi­sion earn­ings in 2010 was at $132 mil­lion-an in­crease by $26 mil­lion from the pre­vi­ous year. She said: "Thank good­ness for elec­tions in 2010."

Ma­haraj de­liv­ered the ad­dress on Thurs­day at the TTP­BA's eighth an­nu­al din­ner and awards for me­dia ex­cel­lence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. The es­teemed awards were pre­sent­ed posthu­mous­ly to Ho­race James and Bob­by Thomas. James died in 2000 and Thomas in 2001. She said: "The me­dia have seen an in­crease in calls from di­rect clients and re­quests for rate ne­go­ti­a­tion. "There in­deed is a rate war." Ma­haraj said me­dia have the great­est pow­er to af­fect change and that man­agers and own­ers should de­cide what they want­ed the change to be. She said the evo­lu­tion of the me­dia en­vi­ron­ment was ev­i­dent with the on­slaught of blogs, You Tube, Face­book, Twit­ter and Flickr and "needs our ur­gent at­ten­tion."

"When leg­is­la­tion such as the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act can be passed and no one no­tices that it un­der­mines one of the pil­lars of democ­ra­cy in the form of press free­dom, it makes you won­der what's next," Ma­haraj said. She said the TTP­BA will con­tin­ue to lob­by in­di­vid­u­als who could use their sphere of in­flu­ence with the hope that amend­ments will be made. Head of pub­lic re­la­tions and ex­ter­nal af­fairs Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, Camille Sa­landy, said since 2006 her or­gan­i­sa­tion had been col­lab­o­rat­ing with the TTP­BA in host­ing the event. She said the me­dia had long been re­gard­ed as one of the ar­chi­tects of shap­ing mod­ern so­ci­ety.

James' bi­og­ra­phy said he was in­stru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of the San Fer­nan­do Dra­ma Guild. He be­gan his me­dia ca­reer with the first lo­cal ra­dio dra­ma se­ries on Ra­dio Trinidad called "The Ed­wards Fam­i­ly." Thomas joined the Voice of Red­if­fu­sion in 1957 and con­tin­ued as an an­nounc­er when it evolved to Ra­dio Trinidad. He al­so as­sist­ed in the set­ting up of AVM Tele­vi­sion, a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny which lat­er be­came a tele­vi­sion sta­tion.