Anyone in Bermuda who is into all things Caribbean will know about Tempo ? the hottest new station featuring culture and coolness from the Caribbean.

The station, which is a subsidiary of Viacom Inc.?s MTV Networks, was the brainchild of a son of the soil, senior vice president and general manager of Tempo Frederick Morton Jr.

Mr. Morton, a St. Croix native, went the United States to study law, but soon became the man with the music and has now found a way to combine his passions into what we now know as Tempo. But attempting to convince the music giant to accept that a station featuring purely Caribbean vibes and culture was a good thing ? was no easy task, he admitted.

He says it took every ounce of everything inside of him to push his idea and today Tempo?s audience enjoys the sounds that were only previously featured in small snippets on Black Entertainment Television (BET).

Mr. Morton was born and raised in the Caribbean and he says that he has always been a student of the culture.

?While I was doing my education, I was always into the music, so for me I was always working in two parallel universes for a while,? he said.

?One was keeping me sane and that was my sense of identity and my culture, while the other one was to be professionally successful.

?Ultimately, it became clear later on the two can merge.?

At the time of the venture, he was the head of litigation at Viacom.

?While doing that I realised this culture that I love so much was ready-made for television, you know it had everything that was needed for a successful brand,? he stated.

?So I looked up and I thought I am in senior management here and if I could pitch this idea and get our culture the recognition that it deserves ? it would be great and so I went to work on that.

?It was interesting because my legal background came in handy. I put the litigation to work and I marshalled all the facts which detailed the popularity of our culture, the vibrancy and the feel of it and I started to write that brief.

?It took me three years and it was just a typical case for me to do up for a strong case in appeal, but it was a hard and a very difficult journey.?

He compared persuading the board to that of swaying a reluctant team of jurors.

?To make an analogy here, it was like convincing a jury that was typically versed in a particular language about that language and that they should invest in that language,? he explained.

?So it took me a while and a lot of sleepless nights, and ignoring hurdles that were kind of placed in my way. The more that were placed in my way, I?d get mad especially when things were said about our culture that weren?t true and that would add a lot of fuel for the passion.

?Ultimately I got to the point were I made the case really undeniable and I decided to go out and seek sponsorship and advertising dollars even before I ran a video.

?So after that happened and the creative case was made the two were aligned and it became undeniable and I got a green light to proceed and on Valentines Day of 05.?

After which Mr. Morton spent time flying around to promote the new Caribbean music station.

?We did six major events in the region, one was in Jamaica, one was in Trinidad, one was in Barbados, another was in St. Croix and one in St. Maarten and they were all successful to varying degrees.

?Some were mega successful and were all met with a level of wow, like ?finally?. But at that point people were still trying to figure out what is it really? Is it MTV and who is really behind it? And there are still lot of questions in the marketplace. Then finally in November 21, of 2005, people got to see what the stream of mind was and they said, ?Oh it is a Caribbean guy ? no wonder!?

?And then they started to see Tempo and began to start to enjoy it. They realised that it was something different with a quality that they had never seen before. It was just not the quality in look, but something that was generally non-stereotypical.

?My whole view was to give the channel certain level of vibrancy, a certain look, feel and tone that didn?t dumb it down to the typical view of it with palm trees. You know it is Caribbean, but it was a shiny Caribbean.

?And interestingly enough we were the most successful launch in the Caribbean Cable Co-op. We launched to over 300,000 subscribers with about a million viewers, and 17 islands when we launched in November. So it was pretty amazing.

?We are now in 20 countries, we have picked up another seven in the last month.?

Mr. Morton added that the feel and the view of Tempo was hopeful and bright.

?The creative community are excited to have a platform that they can put their art-form on,? he said.

?And they can be exposed in a way that they haven?t been exposed before. The advertising community is looking at ways that they can advertise in a different way.?

Another important fact for Mr. Morton was to expose the Caribbean to the Caribbean, citing that it was easier to find out was going on in the States, than to know what was happening in a neighbouring island.

?Even though Montserrat might only be a 15-minute plane ride away, it is easier to know what is going on in New York than there,? he said.

?So one of my goals was that we were going to talk to each other and educate each other about what was going on in our region and ultimately for the advancement of Caribbean people.

?We are Caribbean first and Bajan or Jamaican second and our region would benefit from a regional approach. I think it is a stronger and more compelling story.

?The whole point of launching in the Caribbean first, was that.... it was important to get the love of the Caribbean people first, get them to tell you what?s right and to tell you what?s wrong, for them to curse you when they want to curse you, and to get the thing right before you go to the rest of the world.

?Once I knew I could get the love of the Caribbean then I knew I could get the Diaspora and that is what happening and people are recording Tempo and taking it back to the States.?

Mr. Morton is looking at next September as a launch date for the United States and his thoughts are that by then the Station will be ready.

?Our culture is a little bit infectious to everybody ? world wide and there isn?t someone who doesn?t touch down and pick up something. So Tempo is going to be a universal situation and I have reason to believe that as we go we will be one of the hottest situations around because that is just how our culture is ? it is vibrant, it is happy and it is really soul satisfying.?

But Tempo?s aim is not just about sending a message of fun and games it is also to help solve some of the issues facing the region ? and one of those major issues is AIDS.

?We look at many of the issues that may be affecting our community and Tempo wants to be engaged in providing solutions,? he said.

?So we decided to launch this campaign centred around ?One Love? and it is bout bringing the region together ? one love, one region and one Tempo.

?So it is really a search for that one love, what it really means and about how to get together to help solve those problems. And so I identified three areas because we can?t solve them all and even three is a lot.

?One is health and in particular HIV/AIDS awareness which is messing up our community and per capita it is one of the most affected regions after Africa.

?We have to be a part of that, so we have partnered with Population Services Incorporated (PSI) and the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has a huge partnership with the MTV Network to deal with or to bring HIV/AIDS messaging to our community from our sponsored artists who are talking about being careful and wearing condoms.

?And we are about to launch a pretty significant campaign with PSI and we are hoping to use Tempo to get the message across to Caribbean people in a general.?

The next area is that of Creative Arts Education ? something which is often viewed not as your career mainstay.

?Growing up in the region, Caribbean parents look at creativity as the extracurricular activity, you can play music, but it is really the books that count,? Mr. Morton said.

?I?m thankful for that because I think that there is something to that, but I think that we can learn that there is a balance that can help to provide a more balanced and well-rounded individual rather than pitting one against the other.

?I personally think that every Caribbean child should know how to play the steel pan, because that is the only acoustic instrument that was made in the last century and it was made in Trinidad and it makes the most beautiful sound.

?I feel that playing music is a sense of discipline and we are going to be creating some creative-type education programmes or at least working with the schools. Perhaps we can put instruments in the schools and maybe use a VH1 Save the Music model.?

Another aspect of the One Love Campaign is being prepared for hurricanes in the region.

?There were a bunch of hurricanes last year and we had an auction with a bunch of artistes and we had lots of artiste paraphernalia like a guitar signed by Wyclef Jean and we made about $30,000 and the company pitched in another $30,000 and we gave it to Grenada.

?So in the case of disaster Tempo always wants to be ready and wants the community to be in a position of readiness and to always help each other in the spirit of one love in the spirit that it could be them another time around.

?So those are the three concepts of the One Love initiative.?

At the moment Tempo is currently available on Bermuda Cable Vision and may soon be available on WOW.