WEIGHING IN ON GAYELLE

Here's a response to our post on Gayelle from Attillah Springer, one of the station's presenters.

"Hi
I wanted to say thanks for the very important work you are doing monitoring local media. It's a job that someone desperately needs to do on a larger scale if we're ever to improve local standards. Hell, everything from the government to the media needs to be monitored.
I saw the note from a commentator on the Gayelle quality issue and I can't agree more but there are some things you should know about Gayelle which would explain but not excuse why the standards are inconsistent.

"Gayelle is more a training facility than a media house competing with the other so-called local television stations who produce little more than a news broadcast everyday. Essentially what Gayelle has been doing since its inception is taking young people - 99% of them with no prior media training, not to mention limited schooling - and training them how to use cameras, how to light for television etc. It is a crucial service and if you look at the newsrooms of many of the television stations that have sprung up in the past three or so years, you will see that many of their multi-tasking production staff were trained at Gayelle, but have moved on because of better salaries, if less interesting jobs.

"The problem is two fold. One is that there is no real precedent for a totally local television station producing such a high level of local content. A lot of it is therefore experimental and it's going to take a while for Gayelle to settle into a style that is both authentically Trinbagonian and of a quality that can make us proud. From my work in the UK I know that the BBC went through these kinds of identity creation issues in the 60's and is still confronting those issues as they seek to acknowledge that not everyone in the UK looks like the Queen, never mind speaking like her. But they had the capital, the self-confidence and the other resources to make that possible.

"The other problem is that the average age of the people working camera on Gayelle is 23. Which is not to say that young people can't create good quality work but these kids are the MTV generation and so their camera skills are inspired and definitely influenced by the music video style. If you look at Synergy you would notice that the music video style is being aped there as well. I can't say whether this is an invalid style of video production or not. But I think that there needs to be an understanding of it and a contextualising of these young people's experiences.

"I figure however that if they are getting an opportunity to tell their stories in ways that look and feel authentic to them, then they should have the support and guidance of those of us who know differently (note I didn't say better!).
I hope you understand that I am in no way trying to defend what you might be interpreted as poor standards. I feel with the right support systems, that I know are currently being put in place, Gayelle will one day (hopefully soon!) become a force to be reckoned with in local media.
walk good"

And here's our response to Attillah:
"Thank you for your very candid comments Attillah.
We would like to touch on a few of your points. We were always of the opinion that Gayelle is a training ground for young people who want to get involved in the media, and we have no quarrel with that. But who is training them?

You wrote of the BBC and their attempts to carve out an identity and standards, but it seems that the powers that be at Gayelle are taking their cool time to figure theirs out.
There were so many high hopes for Gayelle when it first came on the air, but people are getting tired of the trial and error.
Why the vernacular speech all the time? Why the short pants and bulging bellies and the constant call in programmes? It seems that this is the image of Gayelle that most people have come to loathe.

And while the staff is primarily 23 years old, your audience is not, so therefore the programming has to be varied. What is your target audience? The entire country? Why not find a niche and stick to it; Synergy is music, IBN is Muslim, etc; or on the flip side, vary the programming so everyone can get something. Otherwise there will always be complaints that there is too much of one thing and not enough of something else.

We commend the efforts of everyone at Gayelle and wish them all the best, but if some of these questions can't be answered, then the powers that be should go back to the drawing board and refine their mission.

Regards."

Would you like to weigh in on the discussion on local television? Drop us a line at d.martine6@gmail.com
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