Pao­lo Ker­na­han

"No, no Pal­lo! We wouldn't put a lo­cal pro­gramme in prime time! Every­bud­dy knows that is a big no, no in tele­vi­sion! We would lose view­ers if we did that!" This was the sin­cere ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion em­a­nat­ing from a sales rep at a lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion dur­ing time slot ne­go­ti­a­tions for my shows, Bush Di­ary with Robert Clarke and The Road Less Trav­elled.

There was no point hold­ing it against her per­son­al­ly, she was mere­ly echo­ing the phi­los­o­phy of the broad­cast in­dus­try in this coun­try. Peo­ple are al­ways sur­prised to learn that lo­cal pro­duc­ers must pay tele­vi­sion sta­tions to broad­cast their pro­grammes. It is baf­fling that no me­dia house in this coun­try views a lo­cal pro­gramme as a com­mod­i­ty which will at­tract view­ers and, ul­ti­mate­ly, more rev­enue.

I pro­mote my work us­ing so­cial me­dia and I've been told by view­ers that they switch from ca­ble to the lo­cal sta­tions just to watch the shows. When the pro­grammes end, they go right back to ca­ble. This week I spent two days de­liv­er­ing copies of my first DVD col­lec­tion of Bush Di­ary with Robert Clarke.

With­in half an hour of hav­ing sent out an e-mail, we had 20 or­ders. Per­son­al de­liv­ery of the DVDs has al­lowed me some in­sight in­to a large­ly ig­nored de­mo­graph­ic. I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sit down and chat with a charm­ing la­dy down south in Gulf View. She re­lat­ed her pleas­ant rec­ol­lec­tions of grow­ing up near forest­ed ar­eas abun­dant with wildlife.

I al­so met an equal­ly af­fa­ble la­dy in Co­corite who was proud to show off her re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of Dal­ton Nar­ine's sem­i­nal work, Mas­man; an ex­am­i­na­tion of the inim­itable life of Pe­ter Min­shall. These proud Tri­nis demon­strate that there are many peo­ple out there who want to see more of who we are on tele­vi­sion. This is al­so true of the lo­cal film in­dus­try.

You may have heard of A Sto­ry about Wendy. This lo­cal film achieved phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess re­cent­ly hav­ing sold out every show­ing at Movi­etowne dur­ing the T&T Film Fes­ti­val. We have pro­duced bril­liant au­thors like Earl Lovelace, Samuel Selvon, VS Naipaul, Ger­ard Besson, yet when I walk in­to a book­store the first thing I see is a dis­play with the huge­ly suc­cess­ful Har­ry Pot­ter se­ries.

The sec­tion for lo­cal au­thors is usu­al­ly hid­den in the back. Book­store own­ers will tell you that this is mere­ly a func­tion of mar­ket de­mand; giv­ing the peo­ple what they want as it were. Us­ing the JK Rowl­ing ex­am­ple, in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ers and book­stores launch a mar­ket­ing jug­ger­naut to sell their books.

There are book tours with sign­ings and read­ings by the au­thor. There is cre­ative in­ter­net ad­ver­tis­ing, bill­boards and mag­a­zine and news­pa­per place­ments. Tele­vi­sion and ra­dio in­ter­views are arranged for the au­thor; we are talk­ing ab­solute me­dia sat­u­ra­tion!

By the time Har­ry Pot­ter Part 12 gets here in T&T, in­tense glob­al mar­ket­ing has al­ready as­sured buoy­ant sales; it is like putting out fig for birds. The rea­son pub­lish­ing hous­es and book­stores in oth­er coun­tries spend so much mon­ey to push their au­thors should be ob­vi­ous. They stand to make tremen­dous amounts of mon­ey by in­vest­ing in the au­thors they sup­port.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, how­ev­er, the ex­pe­ri­ence of the lo­cal au­thor is quite dif­fer­ent. Book­stores take a few books on con­sign­ment and if it sells, it sells. If not, come pick them up. Mar­ket­ing done by lo­cal book­stores seems to be hinged more on sell­ing the book­store and not the ac­tu­al books.

If we are se­ri­ous about eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, the cre­ative sec­tor must be a ma­jor com­po­nent of this ob­jec­tive but not un­til we fos­ter the right en­vi­ron­ment. I sup­port the idea of a lo­cal con­tent quo­ta for broad­cast me­dia. Left to their own de­vices, tele­vi­sion and ra­dio sta­tions will nev­er de­vel­op lo­cal pro­gram­ming to sat­is­fy the mar­ket.

Strides in the lo­cal film in­dus­try, thus far, have been en­cour­ag­ing. But I would like to see the de­vel­op­ment of small the­atres fea­tur­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tions year-round. We should not have to wait for the T&T Film Fes­ti­val to en­joy lo­cal films the way we wait for Christ­mas to drink sor­rel (that is al­so non­sense).

The gov­ern­ment must pro­vide the in­fra­struc­ture to al­low lo­cal tele­vi­sion and film pro­duc­ers to mar­ket their work across the coun­try and out to the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. This does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean more mon­ey, just pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance in ac­cess­ing for­eign mar­kets. The gov­ern­ment, in con­cert with the pri­vate sec­tor, should al­so de­vel­op in­cen­tives to grow a lo­cal pub­lish­ing sec­tor so we can con­tin­ue our tra­di­tion of great au­thors.

At the mo­ment, we have more print­ers than pub­lish­ers. Fi­nal­ly, there ought to be reg­u­lar pri­vate­ly and pub­licly fund­ed work­shops de­signed to im­prove the qual­i­ty of our cre­ative prod­ucts. Some of the most cre­ative peo­ple in the world live here, trou­ble is they are sit­ting in ster­ile cu­bi­cles dur­ing the day and feed­ing their pas­sions on the week­ends.

We can build a cre­ative sec­tor that con­tributes to our GDP and bol­sters em­ploy­ment but al­so as­sures that we cut down on the num­ber of tal­ent­ed peo­ple we con­tin­ue to lose to coun­tries which tru­ly re­spect their tal­ents.