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Thursday, July 24, 2025

In de Gayelle

by

20110527

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the me­dia has caught up with the des­per­ate straits in which Gayelle The Chan­nel has found it­self. The news ar­ti­cle opened with the omi­nous line, "Fi­nan­cial woes have forced the man­age­ment of Gayelle the Chan­nel to down­size...again." The ac­tu­al truth is that, since the dis­band­ing of the Gayelle news de­part­ment, the com­pa­ny has been qui­et­ly and steadi­ly haem­or­rhag­ing staff. With­in re­cent times, the sta­tion has gone from slow but pro­gres­sive can­cer stren­u­ous­ly re­sist­ing all treat­ments to ac­cel­er­at­ed metas­ta­sis with a most grim prog­no­sis. Ap­proached for com­ment, Gayelle's Er­rol Fa­bi­en ap­peared to blame both an ap­a­thet­ic busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and view­ing pub­lic. He cit­ed ever-de­clin­ing rev­enues for the quag­mire from which the last bas­tion of lo­cal con­tent seems un­able to ex­tri­cate it­self.

I have on­ly the great­est re­spect for Er­rol Fa­bi­en and Christo­pher Laird. I was giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties at that sta­tion that I would nev­er have been of­fered else­where and I am sure there are a great many cit­i­zens who can say the same. I do be­lieve, how­ev­er, that Un­cle Er­rol does the lo­cal tele­vi­sion in­dus­try (such that it is) the great­est dis­ser­vice by boil­ing it down to ad­ver­tis­er ap­a­thy. I spent four years at the sta­tion be­fore I was jet­ti­soned along with the rest of the news­room as the com­pa­ny's for­tunes be­gan to wane. While I was nev­er giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to look at the books, there was a dis­tinct im­pres­sion that, in its in­cep­tion, Gayelle was beat­ing ad­ver­tis­ers off with a stick. It may very well be that busi­ness­es were at­tract­ed to the low­er-than-usu­al rates on of­fer. But there was an al­most pal­pa­ble an­tic­i­pa­tion of what this ex­per­i­ment would yield.

Com­pa­nies would send food and drink in an al­most end­less sup­ply know­ing that the pre­sen­ters, who com­plained cease­less­ly about be­ing "rell hon­gry," would glee­ful­ly oblige and gob­ble up their prod­ucts on air, pro­fuse­ly thank­ing their bene­fac­tors even as the crumbs cas­cad­ed from their greasy lips. It is dif­fi­cult to say though just how much of that or­gy of prod­uct place­ment was fol­lowed by ac­tu­al pay­ment for ad­ver­tis­ing spots on the sta­tion. How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to un­der­stand Gayelle's philo­soph­i­cal un­der­pin­nings. At the out­set, the chan­nel would re­ly prin­ci­pal­ly on live pro­gram­ming as op­posed to "canned" or pre-record­ed and edit­ed fea­tures or se­ries.

These were deemed sim­ply too cost­ly and re­source in­ten­sive. Hence the ex­ten­sive ros­ter of talk shows from the crea- tive­ly ti­tled Cock-a-Doo­dle Do (which could just have eas­i­ly been called "hey get up, iz six o'clock) to the con­fused and large­ly point­less Dou­bles fea­tur­ing a mar­ried cou­ple which even­tu­al­ly im­plod­ed on air when the nor­mal­ly mild-man­nered duo went Al-Qae­da one morn­ing over the show's can­cel­la­tion. Then there was Maca­juel Time with the de­part­ed Ja­son Daly. This show, as did all the oth­ers, suf­fered from a deficit of guests. Ul­ti­mate­ly, what you would have for days on end is Ja­son sit­ting down on his car­pet­ed box tak­ing phone calls with con­ver­sa­tions along the lines of "Hel­lo?" ... "Yes caller, you are on Gayelle The Chan­nel, how are you to­day m'dear?" ... "Hel­lo! Oh gosh take de ba­by out­side nah, ah talk­ing wit Gayelle heeear! Hel­lo!..." ... "Yes we are hear­ing you caller, go ahead!" ... "Yes how yuh go­ing!" ... "Well I am blessed and high­ly flavoured (tee hee hee). I jess rell hon­gry! Whot you cook to­day?" And so on.

With a min­i­mum of four live dai­ly shows, how on earth did they ex­pect to sup­ply fresh guests for each one every day, and at odd hours of the day no less! Most of those shows even­tu­al­ly went ex­tinct as was eas­i­ly pre­dictable with ei­ther co-hosts open­ly war­ring with each oth­er on live tele­vi­sion or the view­er tun­ing in to find the show gone. Yet man­age­ment saw noth­ing wrong with what most would con­sid­er an ex­treme­ly un­pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ment. Gayelle the Chan­nel was some­thing new on the land­scape and they were go-ing to do it their way. It did not mat­ter if a pro­gramme start­ed half an hour late or at all for that mat­ter. I re­call re­ceiv­ing com­plaints in the news­room from view­ers that the 10 pm re­peat of the news­cast had been re­placed by some bizarre black and white film. I was sub­se­quent­ly told by the man­age­ment, "Oh yes, that was our movie night so we can­celled the re­peat."

In­deed, at times it seemed that Gayelle rev­elled in this com­i­cal at­mos­phere of free-spir­it­ed aban­don and lais­sez-faire ethos. One mem­ber of the news­room told me when I called her to ask if she was com­ing to work, "I takin' my day to­day cos I have rell laun­dry to do. The com­pa­ny say when­ev­er we need time fuh we­self jess take it." That was when I re­alised that Gayelle was a los­ing propo­si­tion. Now, Gayelle had built up rough­ly four years of good­will with ad­ver­tis­ers but, when it be­came clear that the sta­tion had no in­ten­tion of im­prov­ing its prod­uct, even­tu­al­ly this in­ter­est be­gan to dis­si­pate. For Er­rol to say they did not have mon­ey to do "Hol­ly­wood pro­gram­ming" is skirt­ing the is­sue. Dree­vay is one ex­am­ple of a pro­gramme with vast po­ten­tial; for the most part the qual­i­ty was quite good.

Very soon, how­ev­er, what was meant to be a trav­el pro­gramme went quick­ly off the rails, vac­il­lat­ing be­tween out­door lo­ca­tions and in­sipid in-stu­dio skits in which, for some strange rea­son, all of the men were usu­al­ly draped in gauche feath­er boas and sport­ing ex­ag­ger­at­ed eye­lash­es. That was my cir­cuitous route to ad­dress the sug­ges­tion made by Er­rol that view­ers have a pref­er­ence for for­eign fare. This was, per­haps, the most un­for­tu­nate state­ment of all, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the le­gion of Gayelle fans out there. It is pre­cise­ly be­cause the av­er­age view­er has been fed a steady di­et of im­port­ed pro­gram­ming that all lo­cal pro­duc­ers have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to up the ante. There was a time when TTT would hit you with a three-hour In­di­an flick and you could ei­ther watch it or go mow the lawn; those days are long gone.

View­ers have a smor­gas­bord of op­tions to­day and they will not tol­er­ate sub­stan­dard lo­cal tele­vi­sion shows mere­ly to fly the lo­cal con­tent flag.

I have read com­ments about the qual­i­ty of equip­ment that Gayelle had at its dis­pos­al. Well, as any good film mak­er or tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er will tell you, the most im­por­tant re­source is tech­ni­cal skill and cre­ative dri­ve. Ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy have lev­elled the play­ing field to the ex­tent that even the most mod­est of bud­gets can pro­duce won­der­ful work. View­ers though ought not to ex­pect a prod­uct along the lines of Plan­et Earth or Danc­ing with the Stars be­cause the bud­get for those pro­duc­tions prob­a­bly rep­re­sents the mar­ket­ing bud­gets of all com­pa­nies in Trinidad com­bined for two years (per­haps more). It is un­like­ly that Gayelle will sur­vive this lat­est chal­lenge; it has been a long and bruis­ing de­scent. In my opin­ion the brand still has tremen­dous val­ue. Whether any­one would be will­ing to make a ma­jor in­vest­ment to re­vive the sta­tion is the mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion (and it will cer­tain­ly re­quire much more than a mil­lion dol­lars). To Er­rol I am afraid I must say, "The fault, dear Bru­tus, lies not in our stars...but in de Gayelle!"


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