This week, the lat­est at­tempts by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to re­struc­ture its biggest shows in­to more eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able, au­di­ence-friend­ly pro­duc­tions will be put to the test.In the biggest changes to be made to the fes­ti­val in years, the fi­nals of the main ca­lyp­so and mas com­pe­ti­tions will be staged on Thurs­day and Fri­day re­spec­tive­ly, clear­ing the way for a re­brand­ed Di­manche Gras that should be rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the pon­der­ous, hours-long pro­duc­tions of Car­ni­val Sun­days past.

If this dis­man­tling and re­tool­ing of Di­manche Gras works, it may well form a tem­plate for a larg­er re­struc­tur­ing of T&T's biggest cul­tur­al event.While Car­ni­val is es­ti­mat­ed to be the largest gen­er­a­tor of rev­enue in the lo­cal mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor, gen­er­at­ing more than $154 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, there have been con­cerns in re­cent years about the du­ra­tion and poor pro­duc­tion of shows, as well as rapid­ly de­clin­ing au­di­ence and ad­ver­tis­ing sup­port for many tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val events.

The NCC is work­ing with a bud­get of $81 mil­lion this year, in­clud­ing sub­ven­tions for the three in­ter­est groups–Pan Trin­ba­go, the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA)–to pro­duce a na­tion­al event that has failed for many years to live up to its hy­per­bol­ic billing as the great­est show on earth.

There is no doubt that some as­pects of the fes­ti­val are suc­cess­ful, for ex­am­ple the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch fi­nals, which has had such an im­pact that Car­ni­val Fri­day has been re­brand­ed Fan­tas­tic Fri­day in recog­ni­tion of this sin­gle event.Even in this short sea­son, ex­pen­sive all-in­clu­sive shows and par­ties are at­tract­ing big crowds, as well as spon­sor­ship from the cor­po­rate sec­tor.

But these are just a few events of the sea­son and the ma­jor­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly the tra­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions and shows, are strug­gling to sur­vive. Ca­lyp­so tents, which at one time host­ed sold-out shows dai­ly through­out the sea­son, are now fight­ing to at­tract de­cent pa­tron­age for just two or three shows a week. The pre­lim­i­nary rounds of sev­er­al com­pe­ti­tions last week could muster on­ly a few dozen pay­ing pa­trons.

The for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge for new­ly ap­point­ed NCC chair­man Al­li­son De­mas and her com­mit­tee is to bring about the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Car­ni­val, mak­ing it an event that puts bil­lions of dol­lars in­to the na­tion­al cof­fers and at­tracts much more than the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 tourists who come in for the fes­ti­val.

It is safe, there­fore, to con­clude that this week's events will be a lit­mus test for ma­jor Car­ni­val-week shows. What­ev­er hap­pens, all par­ties in­volved must sit down soon af­ter Ash Wednes­day to analyse what oc­curred and dis­cuss plans for the fu­ture trans­for­ma­tion of this an­nu­al fes­ti­val.

T&T needs to move past the con­tro­ver­sy which al­ways af­fects the or­gan­is­ing of events ahead of Car­ni­val. It al­so high time that the main Car­ni­val en­ti­ties are held ac­count­able for the tax­pay­ers' dol­lars con­tin­u­al­ly be­ing pumped in­to prop­ping them up.