TTT Ltd's Waterfront Jazz – a fusion of music and culture

It’s a fusion, a mixed musical pot as TTT Ltd brings together a blend of local artistes for its first jazz show.

Under its Sweet 100.1 FM radio brand, the media house will present Jazz –a fusion of our music and culture, on June 4 at the International Waterfront, Port of Spain.

TTT Ltd’s CEO David Roberts said the show was a part of the state-owned media’s wider mandate to take its listener and audience to the next experience level.

“Over the last two years we have been very restricted in terms of our movement because of the pandemic. We felt as though now would have been the time for us to introduce what is the first event for Sweet 100 outside of its usual Christmas events.”

The event is consistent with the station’s adult contemporary market and also provided opportunities for artistes and creative people, he added.

Patrice Roberts and the A Team, Nailah Blackman and Sokah, Destra and Bakanal, David Rudder, Freetown Collective, Carl “Beaver” Henderson featuring Moricia Cagan and Kay Alleyne, Sharda Patasar, Pedro Lezama, Adrian King and Joshua Regrello are the event’s performers.

It is also part of the media house’s strategy to provide local content for a global market.

Roberts said the company has been observing consumption patterns and even though it is a live event, the company will be packaging it for TV and online audiences through its partnership with Tego. Tego is an app that provides content from Caribbean TV stations.

“We have our partnership with Tego for streaming online. And we have tested before pieces of paid content to see what the response would be like and understand where people are looking at us from and where people are demanding our content.”

The cast was also chosen to ensure the show’s saleability to its audiences. TTT Ltd chose the cast to be representative of Trinidad and Tobago.

“We are going to ensure the promotion of the content when it comes to streaming and airing to ensure we get the type of interest that we want in it.”

Initially, the media house would air its content simultaneously.

Recognising this, Roberts decided do things differently and instead air the content at differ times based on its statistics.

TTT Ltd is on a mission to become as data-driven as possible. It was rebranded and re-launched in 2018. It was formerly Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG). However, TTT, in its initial form, was the state-owned media from 1962-2005.

Roberts said TTT Ltd is becoming more strategic about what and when it is posting.

So it decided to host a jazz show as “it was the right lane and a good brand for us to push out as a signature event.”

This is the first year and he hopes it becomes a fixture on TT’s calendar of events. The country has been getting good feedback on its local content, he added.

In January, the media house received its plaque from YouTube for 100,000 subscribers.

“We have found that there is very keen interest in the local content – it just has to be of a high quality, relevant and vibrant,” he said.

The media house also partnered with stakeholders such as FilmTT to produce a lot of local content. It recently held a writers’ forum with FilmTT and hopes to produce a local sitcom from that.

“We have been seeing very good feedback in the interest around local content. We have been working with key corporate partners like Digicel and National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB) to ensure we get the support that is required for the airing of the local content.

“We have been looking at international markets that have been responding positively as well,” Roberts said.

From February, TTT was streaming in Canada via Toober, an app for foreign TV channels. It wants to form similar partnerships in the US and UK, he added.

The media house is also preparing for the future of the metaverse and Artificial Intelligences (AI). Although it is not as far along as it could be, Roberts said, it is something it has its sights on.

It is working closely with the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) to enter into that area, although Roberts did not wish to give further details on the projects.

“We do understand very clearly: where we’ve been is not where we are going. It is to ensure the messages and the nostalgia that was attached to what TTT was remains relevant in what the world is becoming.

“The only way we can do that is making the content available where the people are and making sure that it is relevant and making sure that it is of such a high standard that there isn’t that excuse,” he said.