AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

RE­PORTER

Long be­fore the birds be­gin to chirp and the sun ris­es to shine its rays, the Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed build­ing on St Vin­cent Street in Port-of-Spain is al­ready abuzz. While this par­tic­u­lar team is small in num­ber, they show their might every morn­ing, de­liv­er­ing one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s no­table talk shows: CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew (TMB).

For as long as the tele­vi­sion sta­tion has ex­ist­ed, a morn­ing mag­a­zine talk show has dis­cussed the top cur­rent af­fairs of the day. From its ear­li­er it­er­a­tion, The Ear­ly Morn­ing Show, to its cur­rent ti­tle, TMB has been wo­ven in­to the fab­ric of lo­cal news, cur­rent af­fairs and en­ter­tain­ment.

And be­fore the lights turn on and the cam­eras be­gin rolling at 6:00 am, pro­duc­er Nek­isha Alexan­der-Cae­sar is al­ready hard at work by 4:00 am.

“My role as a pro­duc­er re­al­ly in­volves me man­ag­ing the Morn­ing Brew. Man­ag­ing what goes on air, the look, the vi­su­als and the guests,” Nek­isha told Guardian Me­dia.

There is a list of things that must be con­sid­ered: which sto­ries de­serve at­ten­tion, who should speak on them, how the in­for­ma­tion should be pre­sent­ed, and what view­ers should see when they tune in. With 13 years in jour­nal­ism, Nek­isha knows it is all about stay­ing in­formed, con­stant­ly ask­ing her­self: “What does T&T need to know this morn­ing?”

“If some­thing tran­spires overnight, it helps you to piv­ot the di­rec­tion of the show the next morn­ing be­cause the pub­lic needs to know. They need to be aware of this. It had flood­ing some­where, they need to know that. There’s traf­fic re­stric­tions some­where, the pub­lic needs to know that,” Nek­isha said.

While the show cov­ers pol­i­tics and na­tion­al so­cial is­sues, many peo­ple al­so re­quest cov­er­age for com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives aimed at mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. This means the pro­duc­er’s phone nev­er stops ring­ing.

Even with the heavy prepa­ra­tion re­quired, Nek­isha makes sure her evening be­fore is rest­ful enough to tack­le the ear­ly hours ahead, of­ten go­ing to bed by 7:00 pm and fore­go­ing ca­su­al get-to­geth­ers or events.

How­ev­er, there is one un­avoid­able wor­ry a TMB pro­duc­er some­times has to face head-on be­fore dawn—some­thing I, too, have had to en­dure: guest can­cel­la­tions.

“We sell air­time. And that’s what some peo­ple don’t un­der­stand. We are all hu­man. But usu­al­ly when you are late or you can­cel last minute, it kind of puts us in a bit of a scram­ble. But as a pro­duc­er you learn to piv­ot. You learn to think on the spot.”

Thanks to her thor­ough knowl­edge of the day’s top sto­ries and talk­ing points, Nek­isha can fill gaps with top­i­cal, en­gag­ing seg­ments that ap­pear seam­less to view­ers. Some­times, al­ter­na­tive guests are awak­ened by her ear­ly phone calls to fill in—a ges­ture she un­der­stands can be an­noy­ing, but one she re­mains deeply grate­ful for.

“I apol­o­gise al­so to the peo­ple that I call five o’clock in the morn­ing, four o’clock in the morn­ing. I wake some peo­ple out of their beds and say “Hey, I need you to come on.” And for the few that say ‘yeah, sure, no prob­lem,’ I am re­al­ly grate­ful for that, it re­al­ly helps make a di­verse pro­gramme for you, the view­ers.”

Broad­cast As­sis­tant du­ties

The pro­duc­er is not alone in nav­i­gat­ing the wa­ters of show prep. By 5:00 am, broad­cast as­sis­tant Amisha Ram­per­sad is busy print­ing scripts and fi­nal­is­ing the run­down to cir­cu­late to the rest of the team, in­clud­ing video ed­i­tors, tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tors, mas­ter con­trol and, of course, the host.

“Each morn­ing is very hec­tic. The re­al test is be­ing able to adapt very quick­ly and put things in place,” Amisha ex­plained.

In her role, Amisha is al­so re­spon­si­ble for guest man­age­ment, which brings its own stress if a guest is run­ning late. As the core me­di­a­tor for the crew, Amisha notes that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key to en­sur­ing every­one stays on the same page.

She al­so faces a unique lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenge that many might over­look: trans­porta­tion, get­ting to work so ear­ly in the morn­ing.

“One chal­lenge I have to men­tion is my ve­hi­cle. It hap­pened to me more than twice where, when I now go to leave home, I got a flat tire. Once on the Beetham High­way, my en­gine light came on and the car start­ed to lose pow­er, at 4am,” Amisha comed­ical­ly re­count­ed.

“Al­ways have al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion if you plan to work so ear­ly in the morn­ing.”

The host

At 6:00 am every week­day, the fa­mil­iar open­ing theme song plays be­fore be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed by a voice well-known across the coun­try and the wider Caribbean re­gion: The Morn­ing Brew host, Ja­son ‘JW’ Williams.

In 2021, JW tran­si­tioned from a ca­reer as a pop­u­lar ra­dio host to tele­vi­sion an­chor. He was al­ready quite fa­mil­iar with the show from the era of for­mer TMB host Hema Ramkissoon.

“I’ve al­ways want­ed to en­gage in a deep­er, more im­pact­ful kind of con­ver­sa­tion. So when the man­date was giv­en to me and you know, you had peo­ple like Ria Ram­bal­ly, Steve Dip­nar­ine and Chan­tal Pereira be­liev­ing in me. They be­lieved in what I could bring to the show,” JW said.

By ear­ly evening, Nek­isha sends him notes for the fol­low­ing morn­ing’s pro­gramme. These notes of­ten ar­rive as ear­ly as 5:30 pm or 6:00 pm, giv­ing him sev­er­al hours to work through the ma­te­r­i­al be­fore head­ing to bed.

That re­search is paired with an­oth­er non-ne­go­tiable part of his rou­tine: CNC3’s 7:00 pm news­cast. A self-de­scribed “news buff,” JW con­tin­u­ous­ly stays in­formed on lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al news.

How­ev­er, hold­ing a long ca­reer in en­ter­tain­ment and Car­ni­val meant mak­ing lifestyle sac­ri­fices. Name­ly, no more late nights. For JW, host­ing TMB is a pas­sion and a labour of love.

“If any­body gets me out­side dur­ing the week, it’s got­ta be some­thing re­al im­por­tant. To get up at four o’clock every sin­gle morn­ing, and be en­er­gised and be men­tal­ly pre­pared for the show, one needs to have a pret­ty calm evening.”

The 47-year-old jok­ing­ly added that while he loves be­ing at the cen­tre of Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties, that par­tic­u­lar week grows more chal­leng­ing with age.

“As I’m get­ting old­er, I don’t know. I’ll have to try to work out some­thing be­cause trust me, it’s tough. Oth­er than that, I am able to func­tion.” he laughed.

And for those won­der­ing what JW is drink­ing from his mug: it’s sim­ply a 3-in-1 cof­fee. Though he ad­mits he should prob­a­bly tran­si­tion to herbal tea.

When JW ar­rives at the stu­dio, he meets with the pro­duc­er and broad­cast as­sis­tant to be briefed on last-minute changes. Those up­dates con­tin­ue even af­ter he is mic’d and the show goes live. As he con­ducts in­ter­views and guides seg­ments, Nek­isha speaks in­to his ear via IFB (in­ter­rupt­ed fold­back), guid­ing him on ques­tions, top­ics or break­ing up­dates, all while JW main­tains eye con­tact with the cam­era and con­tin­ues speak­ing smooth­ly.

“You al­ways have to be on your toes. Yes, I’ll have my ques­tions, yes. I’ll have par­tic­u­lar points. But when the sub­ject is giv­ing an ex­pla­na­tion, and you’re lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly, you’re able to learn so much. And you’re able to some­times di­rect the con­ver­sa­tion prob­a­bly away from what you might have had planned. You could tap in­to that and that will open up a whole new av­enue of dis­cus­sion.”

As the show pro­gress­es through its two-hour run­time, the TMB team works close­ly with the tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions crew to de­liv­er high vi­su­al, au­dio and ed­i­to­r­i­al qual­i­ty. At 8:00 am, there is a small sense of re­lief as the broad­cast ends. But for The Morn­ing Brew team, the alarm is al­ready set—to­mor­row morn­ing, they do it all over again.