Bahama Pundit

The Broadcasting Code and Political Advertising

by Larry Smith

The Utilities Regulation & Competition Authority has published a proposed code of practice for broadcasters and advertisers (viewable here). It is intended to regulate the types of content that can be broadcast in the Bahamas on television and radio stations, teletext services, and cable networks.

The code seeks to prohibit or restrict certain types of programming, and to set rules that promote accuracy and fairness in news, current affairs and political broadcasting

I attended several industry working group meetings over the past several months at URCA to discuss the code. The working group reviewed similar regulations from other countries, including the Commonwealth Caribbean, to determine what issues should be addressed in the Bahamian code. Public consultation on the draft code is open until December 30.

What follows is an edited version of an article originally published in February 2010, which looked at some of the ramifications of the regulation of political broadcasting. The discussion was sparked by complaints about the restriction of party advertising during the Elizabeth bye-election campaign.

Whenever an election is in the air, Bahamians seem to take leave of their senses. And the current controversy over political broadcasting rules set by the new utilities regulator (URCA) is a telling example.

This is not to deny that we should pay a lot of attention to any attempt to regulate the media. in fact, this should be the subject of a full-scale public debate going forward - rather than just a closed-door conversation among media moguls. But before we get to the broader issues of how we regulate speech during an election, a word or two on the local tempest in a teacup is in order.

Broadcasting Rules and the Regulation of Election Campaigns

by Larry Smith

Whenever an election is in the air, Bahamians seem to take leave of their senses. And the current controversy over political broadcasting rules set by the new utilities regulator (URCA) is a telling example.

This is not to deny that we should pay a lot of attention to any attempt to regulate the media. in fact, this should be the subject of a full-scale public debate going forward - rather than just a closed-door conversation among media moguls.

The question of how we regulate speech during an election has some interesting parallels with the recent US Supreme Court decison on political advertising - the ruling that was sharply criticised by President Barack Obama in his state of the union address last Wednesday. But before we get to those broader questions, a word or two on the local tempest in a teacup is in order.

Landmark Communications Bill About to Change Industry Forever

by Larry Smith

If you work for Cable Bahamas or the phone companies, you may have a vague idea that BTC's pending privatisation (a process that began in 1997) will bring some changes to the Bahamian communications landscape.

Well, you would be wrong.

As a matter of fact, BTCs sale will be a watershed for our media and telecoms industries because everything will change. And we do mean everything - including ZNS and Cable Bahamas. In fact, reshaping the national communications landscape will probably go down as Hubert Ingraham's greatest legacy.

Until recently, like most others I was a die-hard skeptic in this regard. But after mingling with industry representatives during a four-hour consultation meeting at the British Colonial Hilton last Friday, I sense a climate of change similar to the early 1990s, when the stultifying state monopoly on broadcasting was finally broken.

Can We Change The Bahamian Broadcasting Landscape?

by Larry Smith

A select group of experts met on Centreville Hill last week to launch a process that could change the face of Bahamian broadcasting and drag our antiquated communications and information sector kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

They included the head of the Jamaica Broadcasting Commission, the former chiefs of the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Television Hong Kong, a retired senior executive from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Britain's top expert on media law.

They were here because a "strategic opportunity" exists to transform ZNS from a hacked-out state agency to an independent and professional public broadcaster that actually returns some value for the millions that taxpayers throw at it every year - millions that could otherwise be spent on urgent infrastructure needs.

As Senior Deputy General Manager Carlton Smith - a 22-year ZNS veteran - acknowledged at the broadcasting workshop last Friday, "We are drifting somewhere in space. We are a sinking ship. We are in trouble."

Converting State-Run ZNS into a Public Service Broadcaster

by Larry Smith

"Any administration faced with the responsibility to deal with the future of broadcasting has two choices: one is to continue to use BCB as a state-run facility for government and party propaganda purposes, leaving (it) to languish in an ever-expanding market of competition; the other is to create, in the national interest, a new public service broadcasting culture." -- Senator Kay Forbes-Smith, writing in Commonwealth Broadcaster magazine.

Sorry, but I have to say the good senator is wrong. There are more than two choices for ZNS.

A third choice - in my view, the best option - would be to dismantle the corporation and sell its parts to the highest bidder, with current employees finding new homes in the real world with the help of a typically generous government severance package.

Two years ago this column had the following to say on the subject: "We should consider whether we need ZNS at all. Even if it could be detached from direct government control, it would likely turn into a broadcasting version of Bahamas Information Services, another pointless agency whose employees trot behind government ministers to produce 'official' news of dubious value."

Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference in Nassau

by Larry Smith

"One of the first things to go in a coup - right after the presidential palace - is the radio and TV station - so we know broadcasting has power." -- Stephen King, director of BBC World Service Trust, speaking at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association meeting in Nassau last week.

Seventeen years ago, in the midst of a tanking economy, a group of home-grown Muslim jihadis blew up the police headquarters in Trinidad, took over parliament and held the prime minister and many others hostage.

The second thing they did was take over the state-run television station - to announce that the government had been overthrown.

A six-day stand-off ensued with the army, accompanied by widespread looting and chaos in the capital. The prime minister and his attorney general were both shot and wounded by their captors, and dozens of others were killed during the coup attempt.

Trinidad and Tobago is a plural society. The main ethnic groups are Hindu East Indians and Christian Africans, with a small minority of Muslim Asians, but the group that mounted the 1990 coup was mostly black. It's leader was a former policeman named Lennox Philips who had converted to Islam.

This bit of recent history shows that we don't need to look far to see how our own parliamentary democracy might be threatened someday. Our formerly homogenous society is now developing a significant and exploited creole minority, not to mention a hardened criminal underclass.

Time to Leave the 2007 Election and Debate Burning Issues

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Two friends – one Bahamian, one foreign – worked together for a while in a downtown office. At the end of every work day the Bahamian noticed that his friend cleared his desk and put everything into his briefcase. Nothing was left on the desk and nothing in the drawers.

The curious Bahamian questioned his friend, a peripatetic Jew, about this daily ritual, and he replied something like this:

“Perhaps it’s my genes or my cultural orientation, or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I do know that when I leave this place I may not be welcomed back the next day, and that will not be a problem for me. There’s nothing I have to come back for. I can easily walk away and never look back.”

Indeed, he was able to do just that. Despite his passionate involvement in certain aspects of Bahamian life, he would frequently over the years unceremoniously absent himself and, with equal lack of notice, simply re-appear months later.

What to do with the Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas?

by Larry Smith

The question of what to do with the state-owned Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas is once again on the front burner.

In a previous article we traced the evolution of Bahamian television (read it here) and set the stage for a look at the future.

Fact is, we could have had cable TV here in the early 1960s, but it was blocked for political reasons. With a population of only 130,000 back then, the high cost and impracticality of a national TV station didn't make sense to some, but it was insisted upon by politicians and intellectuals - ostensibly to protect our cultural identity.

So we had to wait until 1977 for the government to implement TV, and privately-operated cable television was withheld until 1995. To make things worse, ZNS TV did little or nothing to promote Bahamian culture, but a great deal to promote Bahamian politicians.

Reforming Bahamian Broadcasting

by Larry Smith

Another general election is approaching, and - as sure as night follows day - there is rising concern over the role of the Broadcasting Corporation.

Political control of ZNS has been a hot-button issue ever since legislation was passed in 1956 to pave the way for television. Before then, broadcasting was part of the Telecommunications Department, which launched ZNS radio in 1937 as a weather service.

Bahamian television was a kind of holy grail - and our quest to grasp it took over 20 years. It was followed by another 20 years of stagflation - creative stagnation mixed with financial inflation. What should have ignited an explosion of Bahamian art and entrepeneurship, led instead to dull mediocrity and authoritarianism.

The Bahamian History of Cable TV

by Larry Smith

Back in the day, electronic entertainment for Bahamians consisted of scratchy LP records, clunky 8-track tapes, boring Zephyr-Nassau-Sunshine radio, and touch-and-go reception of a few Miami television stations.

To receive those grainy transmissions (on channels 2, 4, 7, and 10) you had to install costly rooftop antennas (a pain in the neck to take down during hurricane season) along with special “signal boosters”. And even then, bad weather would produce a blank, snow-filled screen.

In America, cable television began cramping the style of over-the-air television networks in the 1970s. The first satellite delivery of programming to cable occurred in 1976 when Home Box Office televised Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier’s “Thrilla in Manilla”.

That same year a Stanford University professor built the first consumer direct-to-home satellite system. It was a large dish-shaped antenna used to pick up cable TV programmes distributed by content providers (like HBO) to their subscribers.

In the early 1980s Bahamians went crazy over this space-age technology . Sales of big-dish satellite receivers soared, and anyone with a passing interest in electronics could set up shop and make a fortune supplying local demand.