Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

On the night of Sep­tem­ber 26, 2005, Shelly Dass and her co-an­chor Car­la Foder­ing­ham sat in CNC3’s stu­dio. Make-up done, scripts ready, and cam­eras about to roll. With min­utes to go be­fore the new sta­tion’s de­but 7 pm news­cast, the plug was pulled due to li­cens­ing is­sues that hadn’t got­ten fi­nal ap­proval.

Col­leagues re­mem­ber her sit­ting in the stu­dio with a calm, se­ri­ous pres­ence. It was not dis­ap­point­ment but rather de­ter­mi­na­tion–she was dri­ven to en­sure this new­ly es­tab­lished me­dia com­pa­ny had many night­ly news­casts ahead of it.

“What I re­mem­ber most about that night wasn’t the dis­ap­point­ment or the anx­i­ety, but the fact that even though we were the ones on cam­era, there was a whole team sup­port­ing us and hold­ing our hands be­hind the scenes, in­clud­ing the ma­jor share­hold­ers (Dr An­tho­ny Sab­ga and Mr Nor­man Sab­ga). We were fac­ing it to­geth­er. That’s the thing: when you have a good team and the back­ing of a leader, you know you can take on al­most any­thing,” Dass re­called in a spe­cial in­ter­view with WE mag­a­zine last week.

Last Fri­day, CNC3 Tele­vi­sion marked its 20th an­niver­sary on air. Dass was one of those who had an ear­ly in­flu­ence on the di­rec­tion of the sta­tion but, more so, was tasked with be­ing the face of the flag­ship con­tent that would ul­ti­mate­ly at­tract view­ers. She was al­ready an es­tab­lished jour­nal­ist when she ar­rived, but her im­pact on lo­cal jour­nal­ism would pen­e­trate far deep­er in the first five years of CNC3’s ex­is­tence.

In ad­di­tion to be­ing the prime­time news an­chor, she pro­duced and mod­er­at­ed shows such as the still-talked-about Big Sto­ry, giv­ing a voice to pub­lic fig­ures to speak to the na­tion but al­so be­ing chal­lenged on a na­tion­al stage. The show won mul­ti­ple re­gion­al awards, and clips were picked up in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. It be­came so pop­u­lar that sit­ting prime min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, would mon­i­tor it con­stant­ly.

She re­called, “I re­mem­ber one night, it was around the year that we had the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment. The prime min­is­ter sat down, I guess in his home, and watched the news, fol­lowed by the show, and he dis­agreed with some­thing that I had said, and he called the sta­tion af­ter, and every­body was like, ‘What dra­ma is go­ing to hap­pen now?’ The prime min­is­ter end­ed up spend­ing about 45 min­utes on the phone with me, ex­plain­ing to me in a very pa­tient man­ner why he thought that the opin­ions shared on the show were wrong and what the facts were to his mind.

“Then he agreed to come on the show the fol­low­ing night and stayed on the set with us for about two hours. I think maybe peo­ple felt they would get a fair hear­ing and a fair shot at CNC3 and the talk shows. That was the most sat­is­fy­ing part of the job. It wasn’t about ‘gotcha’ mo­ments; it was break­ing news, ex­clu­sive in­ter­views, and telling peo­ple’s sto­ries. The team of Rose and Roger Sant, Samp­son Nan­ton, and the frame­work set by con­sul­tants like Suni­ty Ma­haraj sim­ply worked.”

Dass ad­mit­ted it was a “huge risk” for the Ansa McAL Group to in­vest in a new tele­vi­sion sta­tion. There are tele­vi­sion sta­tions that have fold­ed in this coun­try in short or­der due to the enor­mous fi­nan­cial strain of run­ning a net­work. How­ev­er, it was al­so a risky move for her per­son­al­ly. She had been an es­tab­lished jour­nal­ist with the top me­dia house.

When asked about her de­ci­sion to take a chance on CNC3, Dass ex­plained, “This is 20 years ago. I was in my 20s, and when you’re in your 20s, I would say this to any young per­son: nev­er live in re­gret. Take chances with your ca­reer, your po­ten­tial, and your op­tions when you’re in your 20s. At that point, I had noth­ing to lose. I was young enough to start over if I want­ed to, when I want­ed to, and I was young enough to take a cal­cu­lat­ed risk. Yes, it was a risk. But as I said, I was cal­cu­lat­ed be­cause of the fact that I knew the peo­ple, the share­hold­ers be­hind it. We had a de­gree of con­fi­dence in them that they would give it their best shot, which meant I would give it my best shot.”

She would spend the next five years help­ing to build the in­tegri­ty and brand of CNC3 be­fore leav­ing in 2010 to be­come a spe­cial­ist ad­vis­er to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States in Wash­ing­ton, DC. How­ev­er, she has cred­it­ed the com­pa­ny for hon­ing the skills she’s tak­en in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Dass added, “The skills that I learnt at CNC3 and in the me­dia in gen­er­al about lis­ten­ing to peo­ple, un­der­stand­ing dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and work­ing with every kind of per­son–rich, poor, every creed, every race, up the is­lands, dif­fer­ent coun­tries, cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent kinds of events from pol­i­tics, hu­man in­ter­est–it just shapes you, helps you to un­der­stand dif­fer­ent points of view, and that is the best foun­da­tion to take in­to what­ev­er ca­reer or plat­form you move on to next. I think that jour­nal­ism at the start of my ca­reer was the best thing that ever hap­pened to me. It will be one of the great­est loves of my life. It laid the best pos­si­ble foun­da­tion.”

From that Sep­tem­ber night, when Dass was all dressed up and ready to go but the cam­eras nev­er rolled, she had no doubt CNC3 would be among the top sta­tions in the coun­try in the fu­ture. “I knew that it was go­ing to be some­thing once we got on air, and once we got in­to the space where we were grow­ing, I knew that it was go­ing to be a space and a plat­form that would last a while. Where you guys are now, there’s still a lot that can be done. I think this is one of the most chal­leng­ing but ex­cit­ing times that you guys are fac­ing, in the sense that plat­forms, the abil­i­ty to get news and to share news on so­cial me­dia, have changed the game,” she said.

Dass ac­knowl­edged the in­dus­try has changed since her time at CNC3. She speaks with deep pas­sion about the chal­lenges jour­nal­ists face to­day that didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly ex­ist 20 years ago. She ex­plained, “CNC3 had the most ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy back then, too … but we weren’t go­ing at the break­neck speed we are to­day. That was a time when every­body still watched the 7 o’clock news. We’re at a point to­day where that has changed; news sources are di­verse and im­me­di­ate, so the view­er­ship may be af­fect­ed, but the plat­form is still valu­able. Times have just changed.”

In­deed, they have. How­ev­er, Dass re­mains proud of what CNC3 has be­come and the tranche of jour­nal­ists to­day that car­ry on the lega­cy she helped cre­ate. She said now the chal­lenge for the tele­vi­sion sta­tion may be to change with the times it ex­ists in. She said, “The worst thing to do is to be afraid of the fu­ture. Yes, I’m very proud of the fact that CNC3 is 20 years old and has be­come such a spe­cial place. I know that there are go­ing to be huge chal­lenges ahead, not just for you, but for tele­vi­sion sta­tions and for prime­time flag­ship news­casts around the world, but I think there are ways to ad­just and man­age them. Change and growth can be painful, but they al­so come with op­por­tu­ni­ties, and 20 years lat­er, I guess that’s my out­look now in life.”

Dass re­turned briefly from 2015 to 2018 as an ex­ec­u­tive at the merged me­dia house be­fore mov­ing back to the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na. For the gen­er­a­tion of jour­nal­ists walk­ing the CNC3 news­room to­day, she helped set the course that be­gan 20 years ago.