Our story last week on the mystery surrounding whether Weststar TV has been sold is still that – a mystery. The CEO of Weststar Rod Hansen is adamant that the TV station has not been sold but admitted to me if someone came along with a substantial offer he would consider.

Although Weststar TV is at present the only legal cable provider there are other companies who have been “making waves” in saying they are going to be offering cable TV – these include Infinity Broadband (Randy Merren), Logic and LIME, although Infinity is the only one who have suggested a date (within 2 years).

What baffles me is that when the television licences were given in 1991/92 to CITN, CiTV and CTS all three providers had to maintain a free local broadcast channel.  It was a very stringent condition and there were a list of hours the broadcast station had to adhere to in providing local programming. As far as I know there is nothing now in the licences issued by the regulatory body, the Information & Communications Technology Authority (ICTA), for such a requirement. Having been the owner of CITN along with my wife, Joan, this condition was very costly and the advertising revenues one could even hope to achieve from this lone source would not and could not hope to cover the high costs.

The detailed press release handed out by Mr Merren makes no mention of a local broadcast station but says television viewers in Cayman may be able to access several hundred television channels from around the world.

Merren says Infinity Broadband has contacted several content aggregators, i.e. companies who sell packages of television stations to networks, to ensure that they will be able to offer a wide range of television channels to customers.

“We will be bringing our customers channels that they can already get via WestStar as well as new stations from the US, the UK and elsewhere, including Spanish-speaking channels. We can bring television stations to our viewers from anywhere in the world, as long as they are on the satellite to which we are connected,” he confirms. “Capacity is not a problem.”

Knowing how difficult and expensive it is to legally obtain television channels from overseas I am astonished at this statement. The owners of the programming content are in most cases not the actual TV stations – the rights are owned by the studios and producers who make the programming. This is why certain programming is blacked out on Weststar Cable. In the USA the TV stations have to have an overseas licence to even beam their station out of the USA. Subsequently, there is still a limited amount of legal programming available.

This is why the providers here in Cayman of satellite TV have to have an address in the USA for their download box to operate and are able to beat the rates of Weststar TV and offer more programming.

In nearly every country in Europe, the USA and Latin America the provider of satellite television must by law provide the local broadcast channels. That is not so here. When I owned CITN and was the licence holder of Weststar’s cable operation I fought for this anomaly to be rectified but it fell on deaf ears. When I raised the question when the ICTA became law why there was no provision for broadcast television included I was told this was a separate matter to be dealt directly with government.

Having heard our Premier, Hon. McKeeva Bush, say the government was proposing their own broadcast station I can now perhaps see why broadcast television has been omitted. Whoever controls the air waves has a very powerful voice and if there is only one voice……

Note: In case anyone still believes Joan and I have a financial interest in Weststar and/or CITN they are incorrect. It was not a happy parting. However, and no matter, if I feel something is wrong and there is no level playing field, my mouth will be heard.