HAITI Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide - Infoasaid

100The DAGMAR survey showed that television viewing in Léogane 35 km west ofPort-au-Prince, was dominated by the top three TV stations broadcasting from thecapital; Télé Caraïbes, Télé Ginen and Télévision Nationale d’Haiti.Further afield, in Saint-Marc, Cap-Haïtien and Petit Goâve, television viewing wasdominated by local stations.Television first came to Haiti in 1959.State run TNH was launched in 1979 by the government of former president Jean-Claude Duvalier (‘Baby Doc’).Television remained the exclusive preserve of a small affluent elite until the fall of theDuvalier dictatorship in 1986.There has been an explosion in the number of new TV stations created since thenand many more people have acquired TV sets.At the start of 1989, Haiti still had only two television stations. But three years later,in 1992, there were 32 on air across the country.There is likely to be some consolidation in Haiti’s crowded television sector in thenear future.Many of the smaller stations are unable to afford the new equipment required tomigrate from analogue to digital broadcasting by the government deadline of 2015.It is likely that many of them will close.Television channels that show very few locally produced programmes are also likelyto come under pressure from the continued expansion of cable and satellite TV.There are several local satellite TV providers in Haiti.They include Télé Haiti, which began life in 1959 as Haiti’s first free-to-air televisionchannel. The company has since become a cable operator that mainly carriesforeign TV channels.100