Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Let’s start with Kath­leen “Aun­ty Kay” Warn­er; she placed on stage a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions of en­ter­tain­ers such as the young Spar­row, Re­la­tor and sev­er­al oth­ers. At the end of their per­for­mances, Aun­ty Kay roused the live au­di­ence to an en­cour­ag­ing “Bra­vo, Bra­vo”, a means of en­sur­ing the young ones felt good about them­selves. Aun­ty Hazel Ward made con­tri­bu­tions sim­i­lar to her pre­de­ces­sor.

Ra­dio Trinidad’s Sun­day Ser­e­nade, host­ed by Sam Ghany, pro­vid­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for many es­tab­lished in­di­vid­u­als and ag­gre­ga­tions of mu­si­cians to dis­play their tal­ents to live au­di­ences in a big stu­dio at the sta­tion and for thou­sands across the coun­try who may not oth­er­wise have been able to hear the bands and singers live. I re­mem­ber Ed and An­gela John­son, the Al­bi­nos and the Ralph Davies Quar­tet.

I men­tioned last week the live elec­tion night cov­er­age and dis­cus­sion pan­el of the his­toric 1986 gen­er­al elec­tions, sim­i­lar and ex­pand­ed live cov­er­age of cam­paign meet­ings, dis­cus­sions in stu­dio, fol­lowed by the 1991 polls in the Giusep­pi/Madeira era.

Pro­gramme Man­ag­er Gabriel Fran­cis sent me to Grena­da to pro­duce two dai­ly re­ports on the over­throw and killing of Mau­rice Bish­op by his com­rades.

Not for the first time on ra­dio, there were sev­er­al pro­grammes in which lis­ten­ers freely and plen­ti­ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed. It’s My Turn, with hosts such as Madeira, Ran­some, John­son, Fazeer Mo­hammed, Sed­ley Joseph, Kaliper­sad, Verne Bur­nett, San­dra Ma­haraj and my­self, pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for lis­ten­ers to move off the side­lines to ex­press live on air their views on sub­jects of their choice.

The news and cur­rent af­fairs pro­gram­ming ini­ti­at­ed anew by Giusep­pi and Jones P en­com­passed dy­nam­ic news pro­duc­tions led by Deb­bie Ran­some; dis­cus­sion and mu­sic pro­grammes, the live cov­er­age of at least one Cari­com Sum­mit, and sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor re­gion­al news-mak­ing events.

I re­turn to the news­room led by the ven­er­a­ble Ver­non Downes, hav­ing been spanked for leav­ing him out last week; it was not de­lib­er­ate. A five-minute com­men­tary on the sta­tion was a stan­dard fea­ture done by a range of com­men­ta­tors.

BBC news on RT at 7am ex­posed a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions to world events and sure­ly in­flu­enced lo­cal re­porters’ ap­proach to the cov­er­age, struc­tur­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion of news­casts.

Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists from both 610 Ra­dio and RT re­ceived train­ing at the BBC. Among them, Trevor Mc­Don­ald, who be­came the ma­jor pre­sen­ter of the ITN cast and in­ter­viewed many of the most sig­nif­i­cant world lead­ers of his time - he had his ground­ings at Ra­dio Trinidad.

The sports de­part­ment, led by Knowles and Lamy, cov­ered horse rac­ing, World Cup foot­ball, and Test crick­et with lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­men­ta­tors and an­a­lysts such as Reds Per­reira and Tony Co­zi­er.

Po­lit­i­cal elec­tion cov­er­age goes back to the Gabriel Fran­cis era, not on­ly on elec­tion night, as in­di­cat­ed last week, but ran through to the Giusep­pi/Madeira era. The pro­grammes ranged from out­side broad­casts to stu­dio dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son, Bas­deo Pan­day and with open­ings for NJAC’s Makan­dal Daa­ga and lead­ers of small par­ties such as that led by Michael Als with a so­cial­ist ori­en­ta­tion.

We sub­ject­ed the lead­ers of the par­ties to se­ri­ous in­ter­ro­ga­tion. It was a se­ri­ous con­tri­bu­tion to po­lit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion and analy­sis, and that was be­fore the era of par­ties re­ceiv­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions to buy air­time and to say as they pleased with­out chal­lenge.

An in­ter­est­ing epoch in the evo­lu­tion of pro­gram­ming of mu­sic re­sult­ed in Ra­dio Trinidad re­duc­ing for­eign mu­si­cal con­tent: “These ra­dio sta­tions of to­day is on­ly for­eign artistes get­ting air­play...is Cur­tis May­field, Frankie Val­ley, Cap­tain and Ten­nille, Bar­ry White, 3-Dog Night… is all these peo­ple who con­trol we ra­dio sta­tions.” Re­la­tor’s roast­ing must have played a part in the change.

DJ and ca­lyp­so re­searcher Sookram Ali, the Ul­ti­mate Se­lec­tor, made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to ca­lyp­so on the sta­tion.

Mu­si­cian Pat Bish­op and an­nounc­er/jour­nal­ist Edi­son Carr cov­ered Panora­ma, de­liv­er­ing lessons in mu­si­cian­ship on RT, which no oth­er ra­dio/tele­vi­sion sta­tion has come close to since then. Bish­op was an ex­cep­tion­al­ly gift­ed mu­si­cian with the ca­pac­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate that knowl­edge.

One im­por­tant ex­pan­sion of cov­er­age by Ra­dio Trinidad of life in the Sis­ter Isle be­gan with Don Proud­foot’s To­ba­go To­day, which was sub­se­quent­ly car­ried on by Mar­garet El­cock and my­self. I went from vil­lage to vil­lage, spoke to every­one from Obeah Man, farm­ers, fish­er­men, played the mu­sic of the Sig­nal Hill choir, mu­si­cian New­man Alexan­der and To­ba­go Cru­soe, and gave the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hote­liers Al­lan Clo­vis and Car­los Dil­lion to ex­press views on tourism.

It was the pe­ri­od of the first House of As­sem­bly ini­ti­at­ed by ANR Robin­son and Dr Win­ston Mur­ray. The fight for In­ter­nal Self-gov­ern­ment be­gan there. Harold Year­wood in To­ba­go as­sist­ed great­ly in iden­ti­fy­ing in­di­vid­u­als for me to in­ter­view.

I learnt much from my tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tor and friend, Hugh Ox­ley, dur­ing the record­ing of To­ba­go To­day, in­clud­ing pa­tience.

Ed­ward Mc­Dow­ell, an en­gi­neer, man­aged the sta­tion be­fore Giusep­pi.

The death an­nounce­ments on RT and the soap op­eras such as Rev. Matthews and Cal­abash Al­ley were spe­cial. I apol­o­gise to all the per­sons who pro­duced pro­grammes and func­tions on Ra­dio Trinidad that I did not men­tion. Sta­tion em­ploy­ees of RT can be proud of their con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.