TTT apologises for audio drop; denies censorship

TTT Lim­it­ed has apol­o­gised for the au­dio in­ter­rup­tion that oc­curred dur­ing Helon Fran­cis’ per­for­mance of Doh For­get on Sun­day night at Di­manche Gras say­ing at no time did TTT pur­pose­ful­ly cut the au­dio.

TTT said the dis­rup­tion was caused by a Dante sys­tem fail­ure. En­gi­neers re­stored the sig­nal around 10.45 p.m., al­low­ing the re­main­der of the event to con­tin­ue. The broad­cast­er ex­plained that, be­cause the is­sue oc­curred at the au­dio source, no clean record­ing was avail­able for im­me­di­ate play­back.

The com­pa­ny said tech­ni­cal mon­i­tors ob­served a to­tal loss of au­dio in­to the pri­ma­ry mix­ing con­sole at about 10.30 p.m. En­gi­neers iden­ti­fied a con­nec­tiv­i­ty fault be­tween the au­dio board and dig­i­tal stage box­es. De­spite re­dun­dant hard­ware, both units lost con­nec­tion si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sug­gest­ing a lo­calised net­work or syn­chro­ni­sa­tion er­ror rather than ca­ble dam­age.

TTT said a se­ries of trou­bleshoot­ing steps, in­clud­ing sys­tem restarts and a fi­nal con­sole re­set, re­stored sta­ble au­dio for the re­main­der of the event. The broad­cast­er is con­duct­ing a full di­ag­nos­tic re­view to pre­vent re­cur­rence.

How­ev­er dur­ing a livestream on WACK 90.1 FM, a man whis­pered on cam­era, “we mut­ed Helon’s mic on TTT,” to which the an­nounc­er re­spond­ed:

“ I am not go­ing to re­peat that. I heard it loud and clear but I’m not go­ing to re­peat it. Just know that WACK 90.1 FM is where Ca­lyp­sos are played. That’s all I’ll say. WACK is where Ca­lyp­sos are played. You want me to say it a third time? WACK is where Ca­lyp­sos are played.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young took to Face­book to raise con­cerns over cen­sor­ship, de­scrib­ing the loss of au­dio as “dis­turb­ing at min­i­mum and cen­sor­ship, akin to dic­ta­tor­ship, at the next lev­el.”

Young al­so ques­tioned why WACK’s livestream stopped short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent.

He al­leged in­ter­fer­ence in the com­pe­ti­tion, claim­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of­fer­ing tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary were elim­i­nat­ed from pro­gress­ing to the Di­manche Gras fi­nals. He ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion of at­tempt­ing to cen­sor free speech and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights to po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary, in­clud­ing crit­i­cism of the gov­ern­ment.

Young said the record of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion since May 1, 2025 showed “dan­ger­ous signs of dic­ta­tor­ship.”

“We will not sit qui­et­ly and idly by al­low­ing the UNC to use and abuse state re­sources and in­sti­tu­tions to cen­sor our free speech, ex­pres­sion and cul­ture,” he said.

“Cen­sor­ship has no place in our Trinidad and To­ba­go.”