The CNMG experience: How to crash T&T's Carnival Big Truck

A few weeks ago, the T&T government decided to award sole rights to distribute coverage of major Carnival 2010 events to its own media house: the Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG).  On the face of it, this seemed sensible: award management of the distribution to a trusted partner.  However, though CNMG has been streaming its own programmes on the Internet for over a year at www.ctntworld.com, it proved to be completely unable to handle streaming of T&T Carnival.

First, we have to question whether the decision to manage radio, video and Internet coverage of Carnival 2010 was borne out of a wish by the government, through its Ministry of Culture, to really make the most of this tremendous marketing opportunity.  According to local photojournalist, Mark Lyndersay, it appears that the motivation was control rather than optimisation: see his extremely enlightening BitDepth article on the matter.

Second, the expected first step for CNMG would be re-licensing of other providers to share in the distribution of the events for a fee.  It did this with the radio feeds, since Internet users can listen to coverage of events via non-CNMG stations.  However, CNMG decided not to share Internet streaming with other distributors, as described in this When Steel Talks (WST) article on the exclusion of T&T culture media house WACK.  Given government's history of planned failure, folks involved in culture rightly became worried by this imposed single point of failure for video coverage.

Thirdly, we have a failure in implementation.  In effect, CNMG and the Ministry of Culture tried to run before they proved they could creep.  CNMG has no proven credibility in terms of successful Internet streaming of major T&T events (sorry, the two Summits last year don't count at all).  CNMG decided to sell live Internet-based video streaming for four of the main Carnival events as a pay-per-view (ppv) service: the International Soca Monarch Finals, the Dimanche Gras, and the Parade of the Bands on Carnival Monday and Tuesday.  These were allegedly sold for US$20 each, or all four events as a bundle for US$80 (yes, the bundle offered no special discount as an incentive to buy).  Unfortunately, there were a considerable number of reports of failure in the payment system, most coming, embarrassingly, from CNMG's own facebook interface on www.ctntworld.com, as can be seen in this WST article and this Newsday article by Corey Connelly.

I didn't even know where to subscribe for the ppv service; I couldn't find it on CNMG's website when I went looking for it just before the start of the Soca Monarch Finals on 12th Feb and again today, 16th Feb (Carnival Tuesday).  It turns out that CNMG decided to stop selling the ppv service to new customers early on 12th Feb.  In other words, if you heard from your friends that Dimanche Gras was available as ppv on the day of Dimanche Gras (Carnival Sunday), you were out of luck as CNMG was not selling it any more.  And I couldn't subscribe to the ppv service for Carnival Tuesday's Parade of the Bands, even in the hours before the event started (I'm located in a time zone several hours ahead of T&T).  How weird.

Turns out this may have been a good thing, as can be seen in the above articles: CNMG saved me from buying their bad service.  According to WST, it seems that CNMG decided to send the login details to subscribers in the few minutes just before the show started, some got their login details after the event started and others didn't get it at all.  Customers complained of difficulties in getting help from anyone from CNMG by phone; I guess they take the New Media phrase in their company title seriously.  It is to their credit that they did not shutdown the facebook interface on their website that several customers used to complain (some quite nastily).  However, the responses by someone who appeared to be representing CNMG on their facebook interface were too sparse to be acceptable.

At the moment, I'm getting limited coverage of Carnival's Parade of the Bands via Synergy TV's free Internet feed on JumpTV.  This only provides coverage of bands passing on what their presenters are calling the Synergy Stage on the Avenue, and their presenters are limited to three young folks who had little more to offer than periodic questions to passing revellers on how they found Carnival and what they felt the Road March would be - one presenter thought it wise to let us know when he went to the toilet.  Too much of the wrong type of information, Synergy.  There was no interview of any designer to explain what we were seeing, or any other demonstration of the rich cultural history of the mas.  I'm presuming, since that is a well-known media house in T&T, that they've been authorised to do this by CNMG.

CNMG showed some highlights of Carnival Monday's Parade of the Bands for free on ctntworld.com last night.  Their quality was not much better than Synergy TV's free coverage - the only difference was that I saw the 'stage' at the Queens Park Savannah (which is really the road south of the Savannah, ironically in the shadow of the new National Centre for the Performing Arts, another example of government's lack of vision for T&T Carnival) and the presenters were much better in terms of knowledge and interview expertise.  However, they had no more cameras than Synergy TV (three at the most). When CNMG's predecessor, TTT, carried the live Parade of the bands, their presenters - Allyson Hennessey and Maurice Brash - were oracles of mas knowledge by comparison, though.  TTT also showed more camera angles, so the video coverage was much more exciting.  I'm hoping the coverage for Carnival Tuesday is much better for CNMG's paying customers.

In short, if CNMG charged me US$20 for their poor, low quality coverage that was no different to Synergy TV's poor, low quality - but free - coverage, I would've felt conned.  I won't be surprised if their US$80 bundle customers feel especially cheated right now.

So what have I learnt?  I will:

• NOT buy any live Internet video stream of T&T Carnival until the company providing it has proven their ability to handle the collection of funds and distribution of the feed - so I'm definitely not subscribing for ppv in Carnival 2011, especially from CNMG since this year they've shown they can't provide acceptable service, even though their live stream was 'low definition'
• NOT buy any ppv service from a company that stops customers from purchasing access credentials per event up to the time the event has started
• NOT buy any ppv bundle that offers no discount to purchasing the elements of the bundle individually
• NOT buy any ppv feed that is not high definition - the quality of the feed from CNMG, and others, is so poor in terms of resolution that colours are washed out and the image is significantly pixelated, you cannot appreciate the quality of the bands' presentations at all and the sound frequently stops
• NOT buy any ppv service from a provider that has only one distribution source (read: single point of failure), since if they miscalculate the customer load I will likely end up out of pocket with no access to the feed - in fact, if they don't partner with a proven media streaming service provider based outside of T&T, I'm definitely NOT buying their ppv package.

As it is, I can't give my foreign friends who never experienced T&T Carnival a decent taste of the festival.  Instead, we can view better coverage of Brasil's Carnival in Rio.  Are T&T's culture managers tired of losing marketing opportunities?