“The reason Cayman27 went off the air was because it wouldn’t pay its government fees,” said our Premier, Alden McLaughlin.

He was answering a question on today’s (Friday 19) Coronavirus Press Briefing regarding the need for Cayman’s media and the problems the media are having in trying to stay afloat. April Cummings, now with Radio Cayman and also an ex-employee of CITN/Cayman27 referred to the demise of the local free over the air Television Broadcast Station as an example. The loss of having a printed edition of The Cayman Compass was also mentioned.

The Premier was very sympathetic towards The Cayman Compass, especially after the departure of previous owner, David Legge. He was notably unsympathetic towards the TV station.

Not surprisingly considering he was the man largely responsible for its closing down, through his government body he set up, OfReg.

He knew, as all previous governments did, since tenders were first set out to bid for the local FREE over the air broadcast channel, that it could not survive on local advertising revenue alone. Even more true when one of the largest advertising streams was through the alcoholic liquor suppliers, and this was banned by law from appearing on the local channel. It was allowed on all the overseas cable channels, however.

It costs a considerable more amount of revenue to not only set up but run a broadcast channel that everyone can receive free. The equipment alone costs five times more than required for a cable station, and then there is the manpower. If you are also doing local news and weather, and that was also a requirement, that is a huge burden.

Because of that, the previous governments, until our Premier’s led one, all insisted that all providers of the big revenue providing cable stations, because they were charging for their product, had to provide a local free over the channel that provided local news.

In the meantime, the McKeeva Bush led government set up their own television channel, not free over the air, but had to be carried by all of the cable stations as a free addition to their packages.

Obviously it was cheaper for all the cable channel providers to pay CITN/Cayman27 to put their station on there packages than to provide the service themselves. In the USA and in the UK the free over the air stations are a must carry condition.

When OfReg was set up it was obvious from their beginning that CITN/Cayman27 was not on their agenda to help survive.They sent out a questionnaire that included a reason why it was not necessary to insist on a free over the air channel with local news to be a burden thrust upon the poor cable channels. All that was necessary was for a channel to be provided by the cable operators where the public could send in their own productions free of charge and see them aired.

When CITN first came on air there were no broadcast channel government fees incurred, neither was there any government cable fees for the first year. The government in those early days were very keen on having a free over the air station the whole country could enjoy. The first priority being local news and they also specified how much and what constituted local news.

Government fees were now levied upon Cayman27. They would receive no monies from outside cable operators. Advertising revenues were becoming even less because of local advertising being inserted inside some of the cable stations being aired, plus Google Ads and the similar appearing on your computers., smart phones, iPads and the like.

Having started CITN/Cayman27 along with my wife, Joan, and then being ‘convinced’ to sell out to the very company we employed, I know all these details are true. I also tried to help the last owner of Cayman27, Randy Merren, convince OfReg why the television channel should still receive percentage of all the cable channel revenues and to drop the government fees.

Yes. Our Premier was correct saying, “The reason Cayman27 went off the air was because it wouldn’t pay its government fees.” If he had substituted ‘couldn’t’ I would not have written this Editorial.

Now you know why.

And the print media here cannot survive. There just is not enough advertising revenue. I also know and I learn’t the hard way. iNews Cayman started out nine years ago producing an all colour print edition.