The master of mayhem will be back on the airwaves. Anglo-Grenadian Umbala Joseph has joined Robert Amar’s 104.7.

George “Umbala” Joseph is coming back..

Just a couple of months after completing a brief spell with Iwer George’s 91.9 FM, he  will be joining Robert Amar’s 104.7 FM talk shop, hosting an all day talk programme . The new show is scheduled to have its debut on Emancipation Day, August 1.

Umbala has been a provocative and popular talk show personality since the 1990s when he introduced his rip-roaring ,take-no-prisoners style on Radio 102.1 . He later joined Louis Lee Sing’s i95.5 where he soon fell afoul of the boss and was either suspended or fired on four occasions, which must be a record of sorts. His final sacking occurred last year when it is alleged that he severely criticised Lee Sing in one of his programmes.

He subsequently joined 91.9FM but for reasons that are unclear, he left the station shortly after the May 24 General Election.

The Amar name has been linked in the past with Toyota and it will interesting to see whether Umbala will be in front like the Japanese car

MEDIA Association of Jamaica (MAJ) chairman Gary Allen, yesterday urged the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) to examine the relevant laws in Jamaica which might be creating roadblocks in the fight for freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The call by Allen — managing director of the RJR Communications Group — came against the background of a an advisory issued last week by the PAJ regarding the implications of communicating with inmates in a penal institution. Observer senior reporter Ingrid Brown congratulates her Gleaner colleague Arthur Hall, who was yesterday named as the 2009 Journalist of the Year by the Press Association of Jamaica at a luncheon held at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston. Brown was a nominee for the award.

Allen was addressing members of the media at yesterday’s PAJ’s 2009 Journalist of the Year awards luncheon at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston, where the Gleaner’s Arthur Hall took the trophy and a $100,000 cash prize. “I would like to challenge your organisation (PAJ) to examine the several other laws — the Securities Exchange law, Criminal Justice Act, matters relating to sub-judiciary and matters relating to contempt of court — to ensure that those laws do not sit there and create hindrances to freedom of the press,” said Allen. “Let us not just pick one that may come up in the news today, and I suggest that we as the PAJ and the MAJ have a common interest in this area to look for those things that could be impairing press freedom and freedom of expression and together we can work to eradicate those things,” he added. Allen, in congratulating the winner of the award, implored journalist to display professional attributes in their work by maintaining excellence, ethics and standards. Excellence, he said, works together with standards and also called on media managers, owners and workers to come together and establish a set of core values and standards as further delay in benchmarking and standards setting for journalism would results in its standards becoming poorer. Meanwhile, Byron Buckley, president of the PAJ, in the judge’s reports indicted that the entries were competitive. Among Hall’s pieces that won him the award was his ‘God Saved Her’ series on a young woman who had abandoned her baby to attend a dance. Other nominees were the Observer’s Ingrid Brown, Earl Moxam of RJR; and Ralston Hyman of the Sunday Herald. “I have been a journalist for 15 years and I felt that I put in the work, but when I saw the persons who I was up against, I was saying that this field is too good, I’m not going to win….But I am glad for the win and this award means the most to me as it was awarded by my peers,” said Hall after collecting the award.

Jamaica Observer

The Trinidad Publishing Company is still profitable despite the tough times.It still gets its fair share of the advertising dollar.

The Trinidad Publishing Company might have slipped as a media giant in that the Trinidad Guardian is back at the pack in the dailies, the five radio stations are behind in the ratings and CNC3 Television lags way behind TV6; but the company is still making money.

The company earned a profit before tax of some $16.8 million for the first half of 2009, which represents a 26 decline over its 2008 performance when it earned $22.7 million.

Chairman Dennis Gurley believes that “based on the significant investments over the past two years, your company is well poised to capitalise on the emerging market opportunities”.

Despite falling circulation sales, the Guardian remains the group’s flagship company. CNC3 is reportedly in the red and the radio stations,two of which cater for the Indian market, are struggling in a market of 36 radio stations

Not for the first time, irrepressible talk show host George Umbala Joseph is fired from radio i95.5FM. This time the matter may end up in the court.

The sacking of popular talk show host George Umbala Joseph by Louis Lee Sing, chairman of i95.5FM, may have its sequel in the courts.

Joseph,71, was dismissed earlier this week, and sources close to him stated that Lee Sing may face a slander suit in the courts because of certain allegedly offensive remarks. Joseph was mum on the issue but it is understood that the matter involved reparations for the descendants of slaves brought from Africa where there were opposing views by both men.

Umbala, former owner of a chain of supermarkets, is the author of several books, and was previously dismissed from the radio station on three occasions.

Last year, he was suspended for one month because of certain remarks he made during his Today Show.

Umbala has helped propel the station over the past decade to its present rating as the most popular radio station, through his irreverent, entertaining style.

Radio Shakti was founded in 2002 by top radio men Hansley Ajodha and Afzal Khan and financed by the HCU. Adman Rawlins Boodan now runs the station.

While Harry Harnarine holds court in his Chaguanas roti shop about the grandiose plans he has for the re-starting the many companies he once led as president of the Hindu Credit Union (HCU) and HCU Financial, his radio station, 97.5 FM, has a new owner.

The station known as Radio Shakti is now operated by veteran advertising executive Rawlins Boodan, who is a principal of Advertising Associates, an advertising company in Montrose, Chaguanas.

The 97.5 FM frequency is being leased from businessman Anand Rampersad who resides in North America. At one time, Radio Shakti commanded a share of the India audience with the likes of Hansley Ajodha , Afzal Khan, Ken Ali and Mukesh Babooram being the main talk show hosts.

In June 2002, Ajodha and Khan founded Radio Shakti leasing the 94.1 FM frequency from the Gillette family at a whopping $265,000 per month.

]]> http://www.tntinsider.com/media/01497/radio-shakti-gets-new-owner/feed/ 0 http://www.tntinsider.com/media/01351/press-is-free-in-trinidad-and-tobago/ http://www.tntinsider.com/media/01351/press-is-free-in-trinidad-and-tobago/#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:18:40 +0000 Manuel Pantin http://www.tntinsider.com/?p=1351

As a Reuters correspondent in Argentina during the hardline military regime in Argentina, Pantin was held incommunicado by the secret police and drugged. Some of his terrified colleagues, who were threatened, fled Argentina.

The recent dispute between Prime Minister Patrick Manning and the press illustrates once again the adage that the media and political leaders are natural adversaries.

Manning recently told a political rally that the local press was failing in its duty to educate and inform the public. He also went to a radio station some months ago to protest that two talk show hosts were insulting his office.

The station suspended the two employees involved and Manning came across as a censor.

Radio talk show programmes here do sometimes border on libel and slander, often using Trini “green verbs” dialect in discussions which resemble rum shop debates.

These issues raised the question of how free the media is in Trinidad and Tobago.

Most professional observers would give this country a score of nine out of 10 in this regard, but some subtle pressures do exist here to keep a muzzle on some dissenting journalists.

Some weekly newspapers often publish rum shop type news: many educated readers view them as comic book entertainment.

The three daily newspapers are taken more seriously but their standards are not always very high and some of their journalists tend to censor themselves for fear of offending authority and losing their jobs.

This self censorship militates against press freedom here but the pressures are very mild compared with those employed by totalitarian governments.

“The Press and governments often come into conflict,” was one of the first lessons passed on by British lecturers at an Advanced Journalism Course I attuned in Cardiff, Wales in 1968.

I was to experience first hand the truth of this lesson several times in the course of my career.

The recent conflict between the media and Prime Minister Manning was yet another example of the underlying tension between rulers and journalists.

Dr Eric Williams, the country’s first prime minister, once burned a copy of the Trinidad Guardian at a political meeting in the “University of Woodford Square.

This symbolic dramatic gesture impressed many of Dr Williams’ grass root supporters who viewed the Guardian as the mouthpiece of the Establishment.

It never occurred to many of them that it was an attack on the freedom of speech, one of the corner stones of a free democratic society.

Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday also had clashes with the local press, but these disputes here pale when compared with attacks on the Press in totalitarian societies.

I experienced this first hand while working as a news agency correspondent in South America.

In the 1970s, about 80 Argentine journalists “disappeared forever” during the rule of the hardline military government.

I was among foreign journalists working there who were harassed and threatened and felt obliged to leave Argentina.

One of my colleagues, Uruguayan Andrew Graham Yool, fled to England after receiving death threats and secured a job as a senior journalist with the Guardian newspaper there.

Another colleague, Englishman Robert Cox, fled to the United States and secured a job with a South Carolina newspaper.

Cox was editor of the liberal English language newspaper, The Buenos Aires Herald, and Graham Yool was his news editor.

Clashes between the media and political leaders have also occurred in some developed countries with the media usually coming out ahead.

In the mid-1970s, the Administration of Republican President Richard Nixon put pressure on the Washington Post, two of whose reporters were writing about Nixon’s alleged cover up of the Watergate burglary scandal.

The Post’s publishers backed up the two reporters Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein whose reports led to Nixon’s resignation as president in 1974.

“The governments of most developing countries do not understand the functions of the Press and expect journalists to be the mouthpieces of the government,” a Venezuelan journalist told me recently.

Developing countries are not immune from this bad habit.

In the late 1960s while working with Reuters News Agency in England, I saw talk show host David Frost grilling James Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) on television.

“Mr Callaghan,” Frost asked the affable politician “when you told the nation one night that you had no intention of devaluing the pound sterling and you did just tbat the following day were you deliberately lying to the public?”

“Well, David,” Callaghan replied, ‘sometimes one has to take into consideration the best interests of the country and….”

“Mr Callaghan,” Frost said, interrupting him. “did you lie or not?”

Callaghan sighed and muttered: “Yes I did, but….”

“Next question,” commanded Frost, interrupting him again.

Most viewers sympathised with “Uncle Jim” who later succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister of Britain.

I also saw a BBC television interviewer grilling Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about her decision to order the sinking of the Argentine cruiser, The Belgrano, during the 1982 Falkland Islands ( Las Malvinas) war.

Thatcher replied that her decision was correct and proceeded to give a lengthy discourse on the principles of her Tory party.

“Madame Prime Minister,” the interviewer said, interrupting her, “this is not a political party broadcast, can you further explain why you thought sinking that ship was necessary?”

Covering news in “hot spots” is always risky.

In 1973, I saw on television, a clip of a Chilean soldier shooting at a Swedish cameraman covering the September 11, 1973 military coup there.

In effect, he filmed his own execution.

Five years later, I went near the Santiago National Stadium with an Australian cameraman who was taking shots of the site where thousands of political prisoners were detained after the coup.

An overweight Chilean policeman approached me and asked me for my identification documents.

I showed him my Argentine identity card and my Reuters press card and he just shrugged and advised me to move on.

“Congratulations,” my Australian colleague John Arden told me later. You will appear on the British television news tonight. I filmed that encounter and it would have been much more dramatic if he had shot you.

“I am sorry the cop disappointed you,” I told him with a sneer.

John just chuckled and said: “Good show.”

A few months later, a French friend introduced me and a British colleague, Harvey Morris, in a Buenos Aires bar to meet a man he said was Roberto Guevara, a lawyer and older brother of Ernesto “Che”

Guevara.

He spoke to us very briefly and excused himself, saying he had to keep an appointment.

About half an hour later when we stepped out of the bar, Harvey and I were arrested by two policemen and taken in a police car to a police station.

“So this is it,” a very upset Harvey told me in English.

“What are you two talkimg about?” said a burly policeman who approached us with a pistol in his right hand.

“We are talking about our unexplained detention and what we are going to tell our employers,” Harvey replied in heavily accented Spanish.

“Where are you guys from?” the policeman asked.

“We are from England,” Harvey replied and the policeman took our ID documents and walked away.

We had to sit on a bench for about seven hours before they released us.

Two years later, I was arrested with no explanation given and held incommunicado for about three weeks before I was released.

During my detention, I was given periodic injections in in my upper arm which made me feel drowsy and the police hinted a few times that I could “disappear”.

This nerve wracking ordeal ended my career as an international journalist.

Journalists do not disappear in democratic states like Trinidad and Tobago but sometimes are put under economic pressure by vested interests who would like them to do so.

Only 17 per cent of newspaper readers bother to buy a Guardian. Is it really guarding democracy as it claims?

Did you get a free daily newspaper thrown on to your front yard or placed in your mailbox this morning? It’s becoming a habit, you say.

Market Facts and Opinion (MFO), the organization which determines how many papers are sold or read would not have noticed this bit of freeness or chicanery from the newspapers; a strategy designed to bump up the figures

Traditionally, newspaper circulation sales are determined by an international organ, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), which accurately determines circulation, meticulously, examining distribution accounts. Every invoice, receipt, sales tally, voucher as well as unsold newspapers so that giveaways are not counted. The audit is conducted by a reputable firm of accountants.

Anyway, MFO which uses its own methodology to determine which newspaper is read more than the other has determined that the 92-year-old Trinidad Guardian is the least selling newspaper and that the Trinidad Express rules the roost.

The Express’ readership (not circulation sales) accounts for 47 per cent; the Newsday 36 per cent and the Guardian, which has redesigned its newspaper, spent millions of dollars on plant, machinery and technology is languishing at a miserable 17 per cent. This means that few people read the Guardian and, at least, MFO has gotten the picture right because it is easier to get a Guardian to buy after midday than the Express or Newsday.

What the MFO hasn’t said is that the greatest growing readership can be found among the online readers who are younger people who are representative of the Facebook, My Space etc. generation who have stopped reading newspapers. In fact, the people who buy the three dailies are educated people over 35 and the traditional readers who are over 50.

Several years ago, both the Guardian and the Newsday had scoffed at MFO: both the Guardian and the Express, who were ABC members, have dropped out of that organisation.

Online readership is an international trend and some newspapers, in the metropolis, are even going completely online: from the trends, in another five years or so, newspaper sales will drop, markedly.

The dailies are now rethinking investment in plant and machinery in view of dipping circulation so that the Guardian which sells less than 40,000 as opposed to the Express and the Newsday which had sales of over 70,000 before they raised cover prices by 100 percent a couple of months ago, have found itself in a bind.

Being part of a major conglomerate, advertising revenue is holding up somewhat and will be the Guardian’s saving grace regardless of being consigned by readers to the bottom of the heap. Is this the best way to guard democracy?

The television company, which made over $700,000 last year after a $25 million loss in its first year of operations, appears to have run into cash flow problems, the result of declining advertising revenuers and, probably, accounts receivables.

The company sent home eight part-time staff and will, somehow, have to keep pace with the competition with reporters who also service its radio stations, 100.1 FM and 91.1 FM.

Channel C may be an incarnation of TTT, the country’s pioneer television station, but it looks loaded with bad karma and has not won back TTT’s large audience.

Not only that: a lot of talent has deserted the station including Julian Rogers, who is back in Barbados, Wendell Constantine and Skye Hernandez.

On April 1, Gayelle, which is still bravely attempting to be an all local station, had to do away with its newsroom axeing 16 reporters.

Cash-strapped Gayelle is now transmitting CNC3’s evening newscasts.
Never a dull moment in Trinidad an Tobago’s overcrowded media, multi-millionaire Jack Warner is diversifying his investments to include newspaper publishing.

Jack will be attempting to resuscitate the weekly Blast newspaper which went out of business two months ago, an event which was exclusively published by Tntinsider.

The newspaper, which folded after 25 years, is owned by accountant Rabindranath Maharaj, younger brother of Warner’s close friend and fellow parliamentarian, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj.

Word is that Warner hopes to breathe back life into the Blast as early as next month and with a lot of unemployed journalists around that may not be too difficult a proposition.

He is a man with the midas touch and, despite falling advertising, has investments in the hospitality industry, sports, travel and other areas, including politics, where it is said he spent over $50 million to propel the United National Congress (UNC) to office.

That is the single area where his golden touch hasn’t worked.

What did the Beatles sing?

Can’t buy me love.

Trouble is, what can the Government really do when all three daily newspapers, the Guardian, the Express and Newsday act as a cartel and, simultaneously, decide to send up the price of their daily editions by a whopping 100 per cent – from $1 to $2?

While it is true that raw materials such as newsprint, printers’ ink, plates, photographic material and so on would have increased over the years, the newspapers cannot seriously be facing hard times because, according to recently published annual financial accounts, both the Guardian and the Express are doing very well, financially. And the Newsday is also raking in hefty profits.

The Trinidad Publishing Company Ltd, publishers of the Guardian, in its 2008 financial statements, actually boasted of increased circulation sales and had after tax income of $45.9 million while both the Express and Newsday were said to have very impressive financial returns, with both entities maintaining market share.

The Express and the Newsday each have daily circulation sales of over 70,000 while the Guardian is struggling at just over 40,000.

Advertising brings in the real profits and all three tabloids have the appearance of metropolitan newspapers in terms of size – numerous supplements during the week about this, that or the other, which boost advertising revenues.
Some 70 per cent of the column space in the Express is allocated to advertising with the rest being, theoretically, reserved for editorial content, thereby short-changing the reader.

The managements of all three newspapers have calculated that the 100 per cent increase would cause circulation sales to go down sharply: it won’t matter much as there would be financial savings in the utilisation of newsprint and other newspaper production material. They would, simply, use less of such material on a daily basis. This amounts to a savings in the production process.

The reality is that newspapers do not make money selling their product at the newsstands: in fact, this is a cost.

The money is in advertising, stupid.

However, independent market studies suggest that newspaper sales have been falling steadily: young people are not buying or reading traditional newspapers but, instead, reading the news online.

This is an international trend which, three weeks ago, forced one daily newspaper in Seattle, Washington, to cease printing and to go online.

There is the double whammy of advertising: 90 per cent of the ads are derived from the advertising agencies which have been overwhelmed by the growth of the media over the past 18 years.

Without any truly reliable guide, except the Market Facts and Opinion surveys which tend to be flawed, they take the easy way out by allocating 90 per cent of the $600 million annual advertising pie to what they term the established media – the three dailies receiving more than their fair share, and then TV6, CNC3 and Channel C.

Just recently, the Blast weekly newspaper was forced to close its doors because of the advertising squeeze and Gayelle had to fire its news staff, eat humble pie and accept a simulcast from CNC3.

Chaguanas-based WIN TV is said to be undergoing financial trouble. So, too, many radio stations and weekly newspapers, Mirror and Bomb.

In the meantime, there has been the appearance of blogs and interactive online community media such as Point Alive that has democratized media.

This year will be a make or break year for the traditional media as the economic bad times worsen.

Gayelle, which operates out of studios on Western Main Road, St James, is now carrying CNC3’s news programmes in what has been described as a “strategic alliance” between both companies.

No details of this eye-opening agreement were released; only that since Gayelle has done away with its news staff, it will be carrying its rival’s newscasts.

Gayelle closed down its 14-member news department on Tuesday because of severe operating losses. It was a victim of the emerging economic downturn in the country with advertising revenue down by 50 per cent.

Gayelle will now be relying on its in-house programming of comedy, plays, talk and documentaries and other features from its extensive archives developed by Banyan, a production house which Christopher Laird, Gayelle’s chief executive officer, founded in the 1970s.

Gayelle has been losing heavily for some time and had to shed staff for sheer survival in an environment where the country has a dozen television stations. At least half of them produce nightly news programmes.

There are also almost 40 radio stations, three daily newspapers and six weekly newspapers scrambling for a piece of a diminishing advertising pie.

Fabien, a popular comedian, said with a straight face that he hoped that CNC3 would hire Gayelle’s laid off staff. News is that CNC3 has financial troubles of its own.

“C” Television lost $24 million in its first year of operations but got into the black last year.

WIN TV, which is based in Chaguanas, is also in deep financial trouble and Mohan Jaikaran, who reportedly sank some $40 million, two years ago, to start the station, has been negotiating with Citadel Ltd, which operates radio stations i95.5 FM and Red 96.7.

Louis Lee Sing, Citadel’s Chairman, desperately wants to own a television station.

Jaikaran, a San Fernandian, who made his money in the United States selling expensive furs had entered a television deal with the Hindu Credit Union but this arrangement went sour and ended up in court.

It is understood that 2009 may be a make or break year for some entities in the electronic media.

Only one month ago, the Blast newspaper went belly up because of declining advertising revenue. Two of its competitors, Mirror Publications and the Bomb are barely hanging on.

Gross advertising in the media amounted to around $600 million in 2008 but according to industry estimates, that figure could drop by between 15 per cent and 20 per cent this year.