Lloyd Rohlehr was a ttt Pioneer

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Sitting on a pile of concrete blocks typing news even before the Trinidad and Tobago Television building under construction was declared officially open by Dr. Patrick Solomon, the minister of home affairs, is one of Lloyd Rohlehr’s ttt memories.

Lloyd recalls, too, doing film stories around town with Bob Archibald taking care of the cinematography indoors and outdoors. And among the very first newsreaders were Mervyn Telfer, Clyde Alleyne and Errol Chevalier looking into a camera in a makeshift presentation studio.

Experienced programme director Barry Gordon from Canada was cool and confident. To Lloyd, physical inconveniences amidst hurry and challenge were secondary to the thrill of having television.

This was a noticing of Vidya Naipaul’s enigma of arrival or something imagined byCharles Dickens. And in a brand new building that was modest and elegant, and boasted a large mural inside.
Thanks to London’s Associated Rediffusion which had already made a success of Radio Trinidad. And Roy Thomson, a Canadian-born media world figure who wasconsidered the ideal owner of newspapers, refusing to interfere in editorial policy.

Thomson was made a baron in 1964.That same year ttt‘s Panorama was launched out of earlier newsmagazine-like beginnings.

A Walter Winchell-type of columnist/radio commentator, Paul O’Hara (Paul Persaud) back in Guyana where Lloyd came from called him a star reporter.

A passion for the news life and a farther reach professionally had something to do with it. Not forgetting a tough role model in the person of Lieutenant Colonel Freddie Seal Coon, editor of the Daily Argosy newspaper where Lloyd was a young reporter. Seal Coon was a trim former British Army officer.

Caribbean matters were an appetite for Lloyd Rohlehr. By the time the West Indian Federation was in stride he was a federal civil servant based in Port of Spain. He was picked by Prime Minister Adams to be personal aide to Sir Arthur Lewis, the famous West Indian economist in his honorary mission through the West Indies aiming at the creation of a Little Eight to rescue the federal experiment at a moment when a breakup of the Federation was imminent.

Dr.Lewis was based in Jamaica as head of the University College of the West Indies (later UWI).

On Sept. 15, 1962 Lloyd, already appointed but not yet free, reported for work at Trinidad and Tobago Television as its news producer, and he was with the station until December 31, 1968, when he took a public affairs position with the United States Embassy, two blocks away, up Marli Street.

Still later, he made his home in Los Angeles, California. Along the way, however, he had become a Fellow of Thomson Foundation Television College in Scotland and then enlarged on his expertise in his new hometown Los Angeles by attending, off-campus, the film school of the University of Southern California. Brian de Palma was a full time
student here. And so were Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Some say that these guys wanted to change the world and they did. And one of Lloyd’s lecturers was Robert Wise, whohad produced and directed the immortal Hollywood
movie, The Sound of Music.

For an international energy engineering firm Lloyd wrote and directed, on staff, many films and the company’s audience included Europe and the Far East.

He had for eight years written the current affairs for seniors script for the Trinidad and Tobago Broadcast to Schools. The Los Angeles Unified School District had him write and direct a number of their films, too, and got a listing in the Los Angeles Times
newspaper.

Lloyd says that all his professional life he had heard, and shared, the advice about script writing: “Keep it tight”. In the studio at Irvine, California, one Saturday morning, a film he had made was being dubbed into Korean and the voice work was being done by a man from that country. The old advice proved his ultimate test.

Routinely, one cannot at this stage change the length of a film; hardly the choice of words used, and definitely not the minutes or seconds one had at one’s disposal. But, the Korean input saved the day.

The Early Years

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The year was 1964 and the month was July, roughly two years after TTT began its operation in Trinidad & Tobago.

I distinctly remember walking through the corridor leading from the Sales Department where I had just concluded business on behalf of a client for Corbin Advertising when I met Barry Gordon, the Thompson representative at ttt who was also Programme Director with the Station. We chatted for a moment and then Barry invited me to his office because as he put it, there was something he wished to discuss with me.

I never expected what was to come next and was very surprised when asked if I would be interested in joining the staff of ttt. Naturally, the invitation left me speechless for a few seconds and my immediate reaction was that I knew very little about the television industry. Barry then explained to me that he and the other expatriates were there to get the station up and running and they were mandated to employ and train locals like myself to eventually take over the entire operation.

My next visit to Television House was for an interview with the General Manager, Ronald Goodsman and the job offered to me was that of assistant to Charlie Moore, specifically in the area of programme promotional writing and commercial production.

It was mid-October of 1964 when I joined the company and began what was to be a career in an industry that shaped my life forever.

The learning process did not come easily. In fact, it was by trial and error because from simply writing commercial and promotional scripts, I was also called upon to report and write news stories under the very competent guidance of Lloyd Rohlehr, the Head of News. I remember also being taught the hard way how to use a hand-held film camera.

On Barry’s instructions, Louis Sorzano and Michael Clarke, two very experienced Cameramen taught me how to load film into a Bell & Howell Camera and I was told to go out that weekend and shoot anything I felt like. On the Monday when I returned with the film and had it processed, most of the scenes were either out of focus, too jerky and generally horrible. But, I soon got the hang of it and improved as time went by.

George Tang, another Cameraman was assigned to teach me editing and that too took some painstaking weeks. A few years later this process paid off handsomely because I was selected as the Cameraman to accompany Hazel Ward to Expo 67 in Montreal.

There are so many fantastic memories about the early years at Television House that it would take chapters to really put it all together, but here are a few that readily come to mind. One area that was truly amazing, was our coverage of Horse Racing which was done on film, hustled back to the station, processed, edited and ready for transmission following the news. In those days, the grand old man of sport Raffie Knowles voiced each race without a prepared script just like he did in his sports segment of Panorama.

Charlie Moore decided that the time was right for me to be exposed to work in the studio and again at times looking and feeling totally ridiculous I sat in the Control Room and made silly mistakes, but learned and soon became quite efficient as a Director of programmes and later on, Video Taped Commercials. Then, there was that unforgettable day that the Duty Announcer was late in arriving to sign on the station and I happened to be standing in the Control Room just listening to Barry Gordon as he tried to figure out what should be done with just about ten minutes before “Sign On” time.

I then put my foot into my mouth by stating quite openly that I could do it because signing on the station and reading a few scripted news headlines was no big deal. Barry immediately got me a jacket which was at least two sizes too big and with the help of Miley Duke and Charles Magloire, I was ushered into the Presentation Studio, seated and lit, and before I even had time to look over the script, there I was on the air with a cue from Shaffick Mohammed who was at Master Control that evening. Somehow or other, I managed to stare straight into the lens of the camera, look professional and get over the most nerve-racking five minutes of my life. There was laughter and even congratulations throughout the Technical Area and it was also the start of another step for me in television. Thereafter, I was given a lot of voice work, but not too many on air appearances because the station had its full complement of full-time as well as free-lance personalities.

My second and perhaps most nervous on air appearance occurred about a year or so later and again it was because of a mix-up with presenters. Don Proudfoot was scheduled to host an advertising magazine programme called Showcase, but thought that Melina Scott was the host. So, neither showed up for the LIVE presentation. Once again, there was Barry Gordon at my desk and without even asking whether I could handle such a task, he put that old funny smelling jacket on me again and took me down to Studio “B”.

This time I was able to get in a couple rehearsals and the guys on the floor really helped by scribbling pointers on the floor behind each of the products.

Naturally, I was nowhere as good as Don or Melina, but with sweaty palms hanging out of the big jacket, I made it and none of the clients complained. And so, the learning process continued with the generous help of so many people at all levels…Barry Gordon, Charlie Moore, Farouk Muhammad, Lloyd Rohlehr, Hazel Ward, Miley Duke, Charles Magloire, Shaffick Mohammed, Hugh Pierre, Victor Daniel, Louis Sorzano, Michael Clarke, George Tang, Errol Harrylal and others too numerous to mention. Training was a priority in those early days and although most of it was hands-on at the station, a number of overseas courses in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. were arranged for many members of the staff.

The Chief Engineer in the early days was Jack Elvin from the BBC and his assistant, also from the BBC was Graham Shaw. Eventually, they both returned to the UK and Deighton Parris took over as Chief Engineer with Jim Richards as his assistant. In the Commercial Production Department, Charlie Moore returned to Canada and I was then promoted to Commercial Production Director, a position I held for about four years until Farouk Muhammad took over from Barry Gordon as Programme Director and I became Farouk’s assistant.

No article about the early years will be complete without mentioning the names of some of the staff that worked so conscientiously to get ttt off the ground and assisted in making it the number one station in the English speaking Caribbean.

In the area of programming, Barry Gordon and Farouk Muhammad stand out. Farouk for instance, was responsible for contracting Sesame Street and the day the programme was launched is still very clear in my mind. He was also one of the founders of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, an organization that has grown in strength over the years.

Then, there was Charlie Moore who sharpened the technical and production skills of so many. When General Manager Ronald Goodsman returned to the UK, the first local to occupy the GM’s chair was Sonny Rawlins. Like me when I joined, Sonny Rawlins was absolutely clueless about the industry and his learning process much different to mine. However, his managerial skills garnered over years employed with the Hi/Lo Food Chain soon set him on the right path and he went on to head the organization in a truly professional manner for quite a number of years.

In those early years of the station’s growth, every member of the rather small staff in all departments displayed a keen interest in their specific duties, ensuring that everything came together before every transmission commenced. For instance, in Programming, the department to which I was assigned there was a team supervised by Ethel Bethelmy. This very dedicated group comprised staff like Ann Winston, Claudine Pantin, Eunice Lyder, Marilyn Leong Poi and Dolly Lutchman while in the Library there was Christine Pantin who was assistant to the Librarian Bob Archibald.

One cannot forget the caliber of presenters that graced the screens in those good old days. People like Clyde Alleyne, Mervyn Telfer, Hazel Ward, Errol Chevalier, Melina Scott, Desmond Bourne, Peter Minshall and Jack Spector. In later years when the station was securely on its way, we saw many new faces like Bobby Thomas, Ann Wharwood, Freddie Wharwood, Ed Fung, Dale Kolasingh, Allyson Hennessy, Wilbert Holder, Don Proudfoot and others who contributed to the continuing success of Trinidad & Tobago Television.

As in any society, the medium of television is constantly praised and criticized. In Trinidad and Tobago where we are fortunate to have a population of different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds, the praise and criticism was fast and sometimes furious. But, I distinctly recall an in-house telephone survey that was conducted in 1980 and the results were astounding.

The majority of those surveyed all preferred the foreign programmes to those that were locally produced and the results were the same with the advertisers. This of course brings me to the line up of local and foreign programmes that were transmitted between 1962 and 1988, by far the best years in the programming history of TTT.

On the local scene, there was Scouting For Talent, Mastana Bahar, Indian Variety, Teen Dance Party, Teen Talent, Twelve And Under, Time To Talk, Mainly For Women, At Home, College Quiz, Know Your Country, It’s In The News, Better Village, Steelband Concert, Community Dateline, Play Of The Month and so many others, not forgetting TTT’s excellent coverage of Carnival and sporting events.

On the foreign scene one cannot forget programmes like The Roaring Twenties, Mc Hale’s Navy, Bilko, Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Days Of Our Lives, Maude, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Untouchables, Little House On The Prairie, Beverly Hillbillies, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Paper Chase, Taxi, Room 222, Knott’s Landing, Route 66 and many more that brought hours of good, clean family entertainment to the television screens. Those were definitely the good years, but change was soon to come and it happened when CBS, Rediffusion and the Thompson Group passed full control of the station to the Government of Trinidad & Tobago.

The downhill slide although fairly minimal at the time, began shortly after the Government took control and the autonomy once enjoyed by a staff of professionals soon became a thing of the past. The Newsroom was the first to feel the effects of the politicians, Government as well as Opposition. That effect was felt throughout the organization and lasted without change well into the 1980’s.

To this day, one very special event stands out as being the most touching moment of my career in television. It was Sunday, March 29th 1981, the day that Dr. Eric Williams died. I was at home that evening with my wife and two young daughters watching Solid Gold, a popular programme at the time when suddenly there was the noise of Motorcycles on the compound where I lived. Then, I heard someone calling out my name and when I eventually opened the door, there stood Mr Jim Rodriguez the then Commissioner of Police and Colonel Joseph Theodore of the Defence Force asking me to accompany them to President’s House.

Naturally, not knowing why and perhaps too worried to ask, I got dressed and went along, leaving a very worried family behind.

On arrival at President’s House, I was told about the Prime Minister’s death and then asked to go to Television House and make an announcement that President Ellis Clarke would be addressing the Nation at 8.00 a.m. the following morning. For security reasons, no mention was to be made in the announcement about the PM’s death, so before leaving for TTT,

I wrote a short script that was approved by the President. I remember telling Carl Narine, the Supervisor on duty that evening about the purpose of my visit without even a hint of the PM’s passing and after I was put on the air and the announcement recorded for further broadcasts before Sign Off, Carl in his normal quiet, smiling way looked me in the eye and said The PM dead nuh? He was not the only one to guess right, because the Switchboard was immediately flooded with calls asking the same question. The next morning, a more curious group had gathered outside of TTTThe President arrived at 7.50 a.m. and at 8.00 a.m. made the announcement of the PM’s passing and the appointment of Mr. George Chambers as the next in line designated to be appointed as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

Despite the fact that Dr. Williams was not a great supporter of the media, he always defended TTT from interference, especially from his Ministers and senior Government officials. But, following his death, the situation regarding political interference became even worse and continued to deteriorate, resulting in the eventual closure of the station after 42 years.Really a burning shame if ever there was one and for those of us who toiled at TTT in the early years and are still around, the pain will stay with us until we die. For the dearly departed, they most surely must have turned in their graves on January 14, 2005.

Reminiscences of a Sentimental Old Fool

I shed a tear last Friday night.

I shed a tear as I watched the end of an era in Trinidad and Tobago. It was on the cards for a very long time and was, I suppose, a natural consequence in a country that had long ago lost its soul, a country where institutions are no longer sacrosanct and which has succumbed to the international quest for the almighty dollar. Despite its inevitability, however, I could hardly believe that I was witnessing the dismantling of an institution that had been born on the night we won our freedom from Britain, an institution that had struggled with us through the good years and the bad years and which, whether we want to admit it or not, had played a major role in moulding the lives of each and every one of us.

On Friday night, Trinidad and Tobago Television, or ttt as we all knew it, signed off for the very last time and, like the cowboys of old who graced its screens for decades, rode off into the sunset never to return to Dodge.
For people like me who had been fortunate to have been an integral part of its history, part of our own lives ended with ttt on Friday night.
How well do I remember that July morn in 1971 when, as a young man determined to establish my future and stamp my presence on an unsuspecting Trinidad and Tobago, I walked through the doors at 11 A Maraval Road in Port of Spain for the very first time!

I was ushered up the steps to the office of the-then Programme Director. His name was Farouk Muhammad. He was an imposing figure, about six feet tall with a stern face and a voice to match. He informed me that I had been assigned to the News Department as a Trainee and that he hoped I would fulfill the promise I had shown in my interviews for the position.
My next stop was the Newsroom to meet the man who was to be my boss for the next four years and to whom I owe a tremendous debt for the role he played in helping me to develop as a professional. Yusuff Ali was the News Director and, on that day began a friendship born out of mutual respect, a friendship that has endured to this day. Yusuff was the consummate professional who insisted on standards of excellence at all times.

“There’s a time for work and a time for play,” he would say, “and when it’s time for work, I don’t want to hear about play.”
And he lived that philosophy to the hilt.
There were only four of us in the News Department in those days. Apart from Yusuff, there was Ed Fung, cool, calm and as knowledgeable a man about News as you could ever hope to meet. The other member of the team was the now-deceased Dale Kolasingh who became, in my estimation, one of the greatest television newsmen, if not the greatest, that Trinidad and Tobago has ever produced.

I was fortunate to have been part of that quartet. There was a work ethic in that News Department that the young journalists of today would do well to emulate.

I remember being almost star-struck during my early days at ttt as I met the celebrities I had watched on the small screen since the dawn of television in Trinidad and Tobago on Independence Day in 1962.

What a pleasure and a privilege it was to meet Bobby Thomas and Don Proudfoot, two of the great news readers at the time. And there was Auntie Hazel Ward whose cultural programmes set standards of excellence I attempted to follow in later years when I had left ttt and had been invited to produce Scouting for Talent, the programme that had been created by another cultural icon of ttt, Holly Betaudier.
The General Manager at the time was Fred ‘Sonny’ Rawlins. His Chief Engineer was Deighton Parris who later went on to become General Manager when Mr. Rawlins migrated to Canada.

Mr. Parris was a great supporter of the News Department and, during his stint as General Manager, provided us with all the tools we required to be the best news team in the business and shielded us when our jobs were threatened by the Chairman of the Board, the infamous James Alva Bain who branded as a Communist any one who failed to tow his line. And his line was so far to the right that no self-respecting journalist would ever think of towing it.

The entire staff at ttt was very professional in those days. Everyone, regardless of his position on the totem pole, set out to ensure that whatever was done was done to the very highest standards.
I well remember and will always respect the contributions made by people like Errol Harrylal, Shaffique Mohammed, Ozzie Maingot, Stephen Lee Pow, Timmy Mora, Andy Smart, Suresh Kawal and Victor Daniel in the Technical Department, Wendell Case in Engineering, Urias Mark in Props, Henry Carr in Carpentry, Julian Best in Film Processing and Ethel Bethelmy, Maria Attong and Barbara Mohammed in the Programming Department. There were many others also, too numerous to mention here.

During the eleven years I spent at ttt, the face of the News Department changed dramatically. Dale was the first to leave, taking up an appointment at the United Nations. Then, in 1975, Yusuff Ali left for the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and Ed Fung was appointed Programme Director at 610 Radio, another institution which, like ttt, signed off for the last time on Friday night.
In 1975, I was appointed News Director, a position I held until I left the company in 1982.
Many new faces joined the team over the years. They included Dominic Kalipersad who started his television career as a Technical Operator and moved on to become one of the station’s best newscasters. The late Salisha Ali also came on board as did Jai Parasram, Bernard Pantin, Lizz Aqui and Verne Burnett, the only one who remained on staff until Friday night’s closure.
Those were great news years at ttt.
Over the years, ttt became the breeding ground for many of this nation’s cultural icons. Programmes like Scouting for Talent, Mastana Bahar, Teen Talent, Twelve and Under, Mainly for Women and Indian Variety, continuously unearthed the great wealth of talent that resides in our twin-island Republic.
Several of the country’s top artistes got their first public recognition through the screens of ttt.

Trinidad and Tobago will forever owe a debt of gratitude to people like Hazel Ward-Redman, Holly Betaudier, Sham Mohammed, Pat Mathura, ‘Uncle Tavi’ Ramon-Fortune, ‘Uncle Ian’ Ali and ‘Auntie Germaine’ Mitchell for their tremendous contributions to the development of the nation’s culture.
And they were all part of the ttt. network.
Many a celebrity passed through the doors of the studio at Maraval Road. Andrew Young, then United States Ambassador to the United Nations, was there as was Cyrus Vance, the former American Secretary of State. Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five, the legendary Bob Marley, Redd Fox of ‘Sanford and Son’ fame and the great pianist Oscar Peterson all visited at one time or another.
ttt was the axis around which the lives of the people of Trinidad and Tobago revolved.

It was ttt’s major news programme, Panorama, which kept the nation informed.
It was Panorama to which we turned to ensure that we were always abreast of local, regional and international events.
Panorama was there in 1970 during the darkest hours of the Black Power Revolution; it was there when Guy Harewood and Beverly Jones and several other of our sons and daughters lost their lives in what were perhaps misguided attempts to change the course of the country’s history. Panorama was on hand to cover the historic visits to Trinidad and Tobago of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Elizabeth, Queen of England. Panorama informed the public of all the ramifications of Trinidad and Tobago becoming a Republic in 1976; it covered the historic ‘No Vote’ election campaign of 1971. It was Panorama to which the nation turned when Eric Williams died.
On the regional scene, it was through Panorama that the population got a first hand view of the Reverend Jim Jones and the mass suicide in Guyana, of elections in Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana, of the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney, of the coup in Grenada and of the devastation caused by the passage of Hurricane Allen in 1980.
Yes, Panorama was a way of life for the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Now, Panorama is no more.
I would be the first to admit that in the last few years, ttt. in general and Panorama in particular seemed to have lost their way. Gone were the fire and the dynamism that had established the station as an undoubted leader for several decades. As the station deteriorated from the days of its pristine glory, an air of complacency overtook most of the staff members, an attitude perhaps fuelled by what they saw as years of neglect by successive managements.
It is not for me to comment on this or for that matter on the reasons why Government saw it necessary to take this last final drastic step. I am not aware of all the facts surrounding the decision and it would, therefore, be inappropriate of me to pass judgement.
Suffice it to say that whatever the reasons, the outcome of the decision will forever scar the national landscape. One can but wonder if the station’s total demise was the only way out.
I suppose we shall never know.
As we all sit and await the coming of the new entity, all that will be left for sentimental old fools like me will be memories, memories of what were and what, hopefully, could be again.
Yes, ttt has breathed its last.
It has gone to the ‘great roundup far away’ and with it has gone a piece of all of us.
I hope I will be excused if I paraphrase a quotation from William Shakespeare’s immortal work, JULIUS CAESAR, when Marcus Brutus, addressing his friend and co-conspirator, Caius Cassius, said:
“And whether we shall meet again, I know not.
Therefore, our everlasting farewell take:-

For ever, and for ever, farewell, ttt.
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.”
I shall miss you, ttt and forever remember you as one of the major driving forces in this poor and humble life of mine.