An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The me­dia land­scape in the Caribbean is un­der­go­ing a shift fol­low­ing Dig­i­cel’s con­fir­ma­tion of the shut­down of Loop News and Sports­max.

Loop em­ployed more than ten full-time writ­ers, along with sev­er­al free­lancers across the re­gion, while Sports­max had a staff of 80—bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of jobs lost to near­ly 100.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Dig­i­cel said the clo­sures re­flect a strate­gic shift away from con­sumer-fac­ing me­dia to­ward scal­able, en­ter­prise-grade ser­vices un­der its Dig­i­cel Busi­ness arm.

Em­ploy­ees of both com­pa­nies were no­ti­fied of the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day. 

Liam Don­nel­ly, Group Chief Busi­ness Of­fi­cer, said, “While we are proud of the lega­cy of Sports­Max and Loop News, we are now fo­cused on where we can cre­ate the great­est val­ue for our cus­tomers and the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.” 

Those im­pact­ed by the change, Don­nel­ly said, have been in­formed, and Dig­i­cel is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing tran­si­tion sup­port and en­sur­ing the process is man­aged in line with all lo­cal labour laws. 

One of the af­fect­ed work­ers told Guardian Me­dia that yes­ter­day was a very dif­fi­cult day for all in­volved, as no one wants to lose their jobs. 

“It’s busi­ness, and I ac­cept that dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions have to be made. While I wasn’t ex­pect­ing this news yes­ter­day, I knew some­thing like this was com­ing af­ter the shut­down of our mar­kets in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, and Haiti. So I was pre­pared. I’m proud of my time at Loop. The good, bad, and ug­ly. We were dis­rup­tors and in­no­va­tors in the lo­cal and re­gion­al me­dia land­scape. I’m grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to it,” the work­er shared. 

For­mer re­gion­al Lifestyle and Cul­ture man­ag­er for Loop News Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips said while the end came sud­den­ly, it was not un­ex­pect­ed. 

“Over the last two years, a lot of peo­ple have been sent home. They’ve been shut­ter­ing dif­fer­ent de­part­ments in Dig­i­cel, and it was in­evitable. I be­lieve that, you know, a lot of the apps would have been shut down be­cause, at the end of the day, it’s about, you know, if it’s prof­itable, and I guess it’s a busi­ness de­ci­sion, so I’m not sur­prised by it,” Dowrich-Phillips said. 

For­mer Head of Con­tent for the re­gion Ce­o­la Be­lix said, “It is so cliche to say, but the shut­ter­ing of Loop across the re­gion tru­ly marks the end of an era. We were a team that pushed bound­aries and chal­lenged con­ven­tions when it came to re­port­ing on news or even con­tem­plat­ing what ‘news’ was in the evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape–glob­al­ly and here at home. I tru­ly be­lieve Loop’s ex­is­tence was a cat­a­lyst for oth­er me­dia en­ti­ties to ex­am­ine and evolve their own dig­i­tal of­fer­ing,” Be­lix ex­plained. 

Sports­max, which launched in 2002, had been a pop­u­lar chan­nel for re­gion­al sport­ing fans, show­ing lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sports, in­clud­ing pop­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments like the Olympics, the UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League, La Liga, and the In­di­an Pre­mier League. Dig­i­cel said the chan­nel will broad­cast for the last time on Au­gust 8. 

When one vis­its the Loop web­site, they are now greet­ed with a post that states, “They say all good things must come to an end, and so it is that af­ter 11 years of proud­ly serv­ing the Caribbean as a trust­ed me­dia part­ner, Loop News is to­day an­nounc­ing the end of our op­er­a­tions. While it wasn’t an easy choice, we be­lieve it is the right one for the mo­ment.”