By Al Edwards, Business Co-odinator
Legendary crooner Frank Sinatra said of New York, "If I can make it there I can make it anywhere." Stephen Hill has made it in New York by broadcasting Jamaican television via his company Caribbean International Network (CIN) to an American audience on cable television. He prides himself as a Jamaican exporter who looks to the US market in areas where Caribbean people reside.
IN THE BEGINNING
CIN was formed some ten years ago by Stephen Hill and his partner Ronnie Nasralla. It is equity funded by a group of offshore investors... Ronnie Nasralla ran an advertising firm called NCM and both men talked about a career in exports and bought into the economic mantra of the time, "export or die". Mr. Hill was of the view then that if one was to export to the United States then there had to be a platform through which the exporter from Jamaica could send a message. They started their operations in New York on Channel 31 by acquiring the rights to the TV show, 'Oliver' from JBS putting it on at the "TV dead zone" hour of 1.30 in the wee small hours. It was the only time they could get. The response was overwhelming and they saw a niche market waiting to be tapped. They endeavoured to purchase more programmes, book more air time and place the focus on heavy rotation of reggae videos.
Stephen Hill has gained a wealth of experience in the world of promotions and marketing literally from the knees of his father who was one of Jamaica's leading impresarios. His father ran a company called Celebrity Concepts bringing down some of the great acts of the fifties, like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and Brooke Benton. In the jazz world he presented Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. The classical world did not escape him and he succeeded in bringing to Jamaica the Bolshoi Ballet and the Philadelphia Symphony." "Living in my father's house I understood from an early age how to reach out to different segments of the entertainment market. You use a different strategy to reach the different elements."
He went on to become a chartered accountant with the firm of PriceWarehouseCoopers in Canada. "If you can combine the skills you have with figures with the creative side, it makes a potent force and helps you in this business. A lot of people in this field are often creative and pay little attention to the bottom line, or they are all business and don't understand the creative side. When he returned to Jamaica. he put on some of the largest football matches in the National Stadium. He showcased some of the top Brazilian clubs of the time including Santos, Corinthians and Flamingo. He even brought down the great Pele to play in Jamaica. His cousin John Barnes, one of the first black players to play for England also featured in his promotions. "Television is all about promotion and anybody in this industry must understand this."
EXPORTS
Mr. Hill sees his foray into the world of television in New York as essentially an exporting exercise. The strategy is simple put your product in front of your market. "Jamaican exporters have a built in market because there are two million Jamaican and Caribbean people living in the United States. These people know about the rums, Red Stripe and jerk seasoning. So if you put an advertising message to these people whether it be through radio, print or television you will successfully sell your product. What most Jamaican exporters have done is to put their products and services into the United States without effectively investing in and using the media to advertise their wares. That is why every month you see non traditional exports in the Balance of Payments continually falling no growth."
So what does CIN bring to the equation? It now offers 12 hours of viewing over the weekend and attracts an audience of between 800,000 to a million viewers in the tri-state areas of New York. On a Friday night CIN broadcasts for two hours, the same again for Saturday and on Sunday it has an eight-hour spot. Mr. Hill sees these as windows of opportunity to sell Jamaican and more specifically, Caribbean products.
"In America, the key to any product is growing the brand. You can only grow a brand by advertising it. The founders of Coca Cola took an ordinary product and made it into the most recognisable brand in the world. Now what is that product, it is no better than a D&G soft drink. But they implemented a strategy, if the consumer cannot find Coca Cola, Coca Cola would find the consumer. Today no matter where you are in the world, you cannot escape Coca Cola. We in Jamaica have wonderful products but it makes no sense having the best kept secret in the world." Unique selling point
CIN is the only network that shows four hours of reggae videos over the weekend, thereby putting one of Jamaica's largest exports into the world's biggest shop window. Mr. Hill points to the success of MTV but notes it doesn't make the most of reggae music, only showing cross- over artists like Shaggy, thereby giving CIN an open market. "The only way we are going to grow our local music industry is for CIN and other platforms to increase the exposure of our musical videos. We must remember that music is the only thing out of Jamaica that can attract a cross over audience and reggae appeals to an American yuppie audience with disposable income. It's all about how many eyeballs you can attract to that screen."
The CIN signal reaches 6 million people and has an audience of approximately 1 million. It has done well coming from viewing figures of 300,000 in the early days of its operations. Stephen Hill is of the view that CIN has become an important part of the social lives of Caribbean people in America.
"I did not think we had the programming to attract a main stream American audience but we focused on Caribbean people and we have grown with that plan. We started with 'Oliver', then we added news, and then sports, then history and now music. We are finding some cross over in our audience figures. I am glad that we did not take hit and missed approach, but focused on a niche market and it has paid off. We have grown in a studied manner."
According to Mr. Hill ninety percent of CIN sponsors are American companies with Verizon being sponsors for the last three years. He proudly proclaims that Verizon says that CIN provided the best response for customers in the Afro-American market, in effect CIN brought them more customers than anybody in the Afro-American market. Jamaica, he adds was number two, in their universe of long distance calls coming out of New York.
A number of programmes that feature on local television can be found on CIN. These include, Cliff Hughes' Impact, Jamaica Today, Ian Boyne's Profile and Hype TV." We need to present to the Caribbean market in America the positive things that are going on in Jamaica so that our people in the United States can say this is not what we are hearing because the big boys of the media only show you the negatives. We are duty bound to correct that."
POLITICS
The political potency of CIN has not escaped Mr. Hill's attention. He readily admits that CIN supported Una Clarke when she ran for Congress. He believes that with the number of Caribbean people residing in the US, there should now be some kind of representation reflecting that. He noted with some satisfaction that she almost beat an incumbent who held the seat for some twenty years.
"We have a responsibility to try and create a better business and secondly to create satisfaction for our viewers but also to influence the way Caribbean people think and to unite them in a common purpose because for far too long we have been divided."
Mr. Hill spoke of "appointment television", a phrase coined by Rupert Murdoch where viewers call friends and relatives to make an appointment to get together to watch a specific programme which tends to be a sporting event or a movie. He tells of tales of people getting together to drive into New York to sit with their brethren to watch CIN and this he sees as having marketing value.
The aim now is to expand CIN, which is now on Channel 73 and goes out via the Time-Warner network. The next phase of the expansion is to have programming every night of the week. "The idea being that people can link with their culture thereby getting confidence to compete in America because the American culture so subjugates you that if you do not believe you are not part of America you are relegated to being a second class citizen."
The plan is to stay out of Jamaica and broadcast to areas where there are large Caribbean populations, for instance Toronto and London.
ECONOMICS
"What the Jamaican Government has not done is used the Jamaican population that lives outside of Jamaica to connect with them to create economic growth. We just have to look at remittances which come to US$1 billion a year. All these companies that handle this money advertise on our platform- Jamaica National, Western Union Money Transfer and Victoria Mutual. If the Government could tap into its overseas citizens with a strategic plan that gets them to invest their savings back in Jamaica there would be no need to get outside investors and foreign aid.
The retail sales of the Caribbean market in America measured by the 1992 Census is US$40 billion a year, those figures came from 10 years ago. This is a clear indication of the potential of that market."
He cites Jamaica National, the Gleaner Company and Grace, Kennedy as having the foresight to tap into Jamaicans living abroad who have both a higher per capita and disposable income. He is an admirer of Grace's chairman and CEO, Douglas Orane who has the vision to declare that by the year 2005, half of Grace's profits will come from outside Jamaica.
As far as globalisation is concerned he has reservations. He notes that we are opening up our markets to stronger economies but that they fail to reciprocate. "We have to leverage the Caribbean expatriate population in three main places the UK, the US and Canada to grow our economy through purchasing... Can you imagine what could happen if JAMPRO came up with a slogan "Be Jamaican, buy Jamaican". Can you imagine the impact that would have, but they fail to understand that. Grace is one of the few Jamaican companies that understands the external market."
Stephen Hill intends to turn CIN into the Caribbean's version of MTV, but he is in no hurry. In five years time he intends to be going out daily in New York. "You have to place yourself in areas where you have a minimum of half a million Caribbean people and there are very few places where you have that. "That's why cable is so effective," he says.
" I can only dream that one day I will be as successful as Rupert Murdoch but I won't be that presumptuous but I must say that it is in New York that I will make my stand and I have made a mark. If you can be successful in New York which is the most competitive market place in the world with the largest consumer market then it will give me a model I can replicate elsewhere.
Stephen Hill, CIN - start spreading the news.
